Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson XV · Topic 2: Bird study: birds to know
15. The sapsucker
Goal: Your child can find the neat rows of sapsucker holes on a tree and tell this woodpecker from the downy and hairy.
You'll need
- A walk among trees: birches, maples, apple trees and pines are favorites
- Binoculars (optional)
- A bird book or app with a picture of the yellow-bellied sapsucker
- Nature notebook
What's in the book
The leading thought, the method (begin with trees the sapsucker has attacked) and six questions about the rows of holes, whether they reach the wood, which trees are punctured, how to tell the sapsucker from other woodpeckers, its colors, and where it nests. A passage from John Burroughs about a sapsucker tapping a maple follows.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
The holes can be found in any season. The yellow-bellied sapsucker nests in the North and in the mountains and passes through much of the eastern United States in spring and fall; in the West there are red-breasted and red-naped sapsuckers.
Keep the big idea in mind
Read this to yourself:
The sapsucker has a red cap, a red bib and a yellow breast; it is our only woodpecker that does injury to trees.
Today's bird guides say sapsuckers usually do little lasting harm, though heavy drilling can hurt or kill a tree.
Look for holes
Comstock begins with the trees, not the bird.
Have you seen the work of the sapsucker? Are the holes drilled in rows completely around the tree? If there are two rows or more, are the holes set evenly one below another?
Do the holes sink into the wood, or are they simply through the bark?
Which trees?
How many kinds of trees can you find punctured by these holes? Are they likely to be young trees?
Keep a list. Feel the holes gently with a fingertip.
The bird itself
How can you distinguish the sapsucker from the other woodpeckers?
What is the color of the sapsucker as follows: Forehead, sides of head, back, wings, throat, upper and lower breast
Compare a picture of the sapsucker with your drawing of the downy.
The sap wells
Read aloud a little of the Burroughs passage: a sapsucker that tapped a maple "in fifty-six places" and came back on sunny days to sip. Ask: Why does the bird want the sap? What else might come to sip at the holes? (Hummingbirds and insects do.)
Put it into words
Ask your child to tell how they would know a sapsucker has visited a tree. Then share the leading thought.
Nature notebook
Draw a section of tree bark with the rows of holes, life size if you can. Write the kind of tree and where it was.
Afterwards
Look for sapsucker holes on every walk this month and add each new tree to the list.
Tip
Don't pick at the bark around the holes. The wells are the bird's, and sticky sap can bring stinging insects in warm weather; look from a step back.