Before the maple sap has ceased running, our woods are invaded from the south by a small army of hungry Sapsuckers. The birds are rather unsuspicious, quiet, and sluggish in their movements. Their common note is a drawling and petulant kee-a, like that of a distant Hawk; but they use it rather to vent their feelings than to call their fellows, for altho there may be twenty in a given grove, they are only chance associates and have no dealings one with another. Starting near the bottom of a tree, one goes hitching his way up the trunk, turns a lazy back-somersault to reinspect some neglected crevice, or leaps out into the air to capture a passing insect. The bulk of this bird’s food, however, at least during the migration, is secured at the expense of the tree itself. The rough exterior bark layer, or cortex of, say, a maple, is stripped off, and then the bird drills a transverse series of oval or roughly rectangular holes through which the sap is soon flowing. The inner bark is eaten as removed and the sap is eagerly drunk. It is said also that in some cases the bird relies upon this sugar-bush to attract insects which it likes, and thus makes its little wells do triple service. According to Professor Butler, an observer in Indiana, Mrs. J. L. Hine, once watched a Sapsucker in early spring for seven hours at a stretch, and during this time the bird did not move above a yard from a certain maple tap from which it drank at intervals.
Orchard trees suffer occasionally from this bird’s depredations, but the sap of pine or fir trees is its favorite diet and available the year around.
In nesting the Red-naped Sapsucker shows a marked preference for aspen trees and its summer range is practically confined to their vicinity. A nest found on the banks of the Pend d’Oreille, opposite Ione, was placed twenty-five feet up in an aspen tree some sixteen inches in diameter. The tree was dead at the heart but there was an outer shell of live wood two inches in thickness. The bird had penetrated this outer shell with a tunnel as round as an augur-hole, and an inch and a half in diameter, and had excavated in the soft heart-wood a chamber ten inches deep vertically, five and a half horizontally, and three from front to back. Here five eggs, “as fresh as paint,” reposed on the rotten chips. Like all, or most, Woodpecker eggs, these were beautifully transparent, with the position of the contained yolk clearly indicated. One egg was broken with a small round hole, as tho a careless claw had been stuck into it.
The parent birds, especially the male, who was caught on the eggs as tho inspecting the latest achievement, were very attentive, flying back and forth in neighboring trees, and giving utterance to the keé ah and other notes. After my descent from the ruined home, the male alighted beside the hole and tapped at the edges, as tho seeking in the sound of the wood explanation of the disaster.
No. 172.
RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER.
A. O. U. No. 403. Sphyrapicus ruber (Gmel.).
Synonym.—Red-breasted Woodpecker.
Description.—Adult male: Somewhat as in preceding but distinctive markings of head and neck and chest nearly obliterated by all-prevailing carmine which reaches well down on breast; marks alluded to most persistent in anterior portion of transverse (white) cheek-stripe and in black of lores; breast (posterior to carmine) and remaining underparts strongly suffused with yellow; white spotting of upperparts greatly reduced in area and oftenest tinged with yellow; white wing-bar fully persistent but often yellow-tinged—thus an evolved form of S. v. nuchalis, with which males are said to exhibit every degree of gradation. Adult female: like male but duller. Young birds are said to be “gray with dull reddish suffusion as if the head had been dipped in claret wine.” Length, etc., as in preceding.
Recognition Marks.—Chewink size; bright crimson of head, “shoulders” and fore-breast distinctive; yellow underparts. Brighter than succeeding.
Nesting.—Nest and Eggs as in S. r. notkensis.
General Range.—Northern Lower California, the Pacific Coast States and British Columbia, save in northwestern portion where displaced by succeeding form; retires from northern portion of range in winter.
Range in Washington.—Summer resident and migrant chiefly along the eastern slopes of the Cascades, shading into succeeding form west of the divide.
Authorities.—[Lewis and Clark, Hist. Ex. (1814) Ed. Biddle: Coues, Vol. II. p. 185.] Bendire, Auk, Vol. V. July, 1888, p. 230. T. D¹.
Specimens.—U. of W.
It is all very well for the economic ornithologist to tell us that Sapsuckers are somewhat injurious to orchard trees, but the sight of one of these splendid creatures, dropping with a low cry to the base of a tree and hitching coquettishly up its length, is enough to disarm all resentment. From what spilled chalice of old Burgundy has the bird been sipping? Or from what baptism of blood has he lately escaped that he should be dyed red for half his length? Recrudescent mythology, ill at ease in these commercial times, nevertheless casts furtive glances at him, and longs to account in its inimitable way for the telltale color.
For myself, if young fruit trees will lure such beauty from the woods, I will turn orchardist. Nor will I begrudge the early sap from my choicest pippins. I am fond of cider myself, but there are worthier. Drink, pretty creature, drink!
Well, of course, there are biographical details; but what of it? Have you not yourself been so smitten with beauty that you forgot to inquire pedigree? Tut, now; you do not even remember a single sentence she said that day. But you remember her. Enough!
Once when the bird-man was camping on the Snoqualmie trail, this crimson vision appeared at the edge of a clearing, and proceeded to inspect our plant approvingly; and while the bird-man’s heart was in his mouth, it lit on the tent-post and gave it two or three inquiring raps. What need of details!