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13 February 2011
Red-breasted Sapsucker
Sphyrapicus ruber
ORDER: PICIFORMES | FAMILY: PICIDAE
The Red-breasted Sapsucker was seen visiting Hayes Valley Farm on Feb 7, 2011 during the Urban Tracking and Nature Awareness workshop. This is an unusual bird to see in such an urban setting and it's sighting speaks well for the biodiversity that the farm is creating in the heart of San Francisco. Woodpeckers are a keystone species that themselves help add to the biodiversity of a place - woodpeckers consistently make new holes in trees, leaving behind the old holes as habitat to be used by others birds and animals.
Patterns in Nature: Urban Tracking & Nature Awareness - Monday mornings at 10:30am.
- Identifying features: Upperparts are black barred with white, and they have a prominent white stripe across each black wing. They have yellowish bellies. Males and females look much alike. Juveniles are mottled brown but have white wing-stripes like the adults.
- Behavior: Four to five white eggs are laid in a cavity drilled in a tree. Incubation ranges from 12 to 13 days and is carried out by the female. Feeds by drilling neat horizontal rows of holes into tree trunks and then returning to those holes later to feed on the running sap and the insects attracted to it. Unlike most woodpeckers, they forage in healthy trees and can actually kill a tree if they drill too many sap-holes around its trunk, although this is quite uncommon. Call is a soft, slurred "whee-ur" or "mew.
- Food: Feeds on sap, bark cambium, insects, especially ants, and some fruits
- Habitat: Woodlands, forest edges, and groves of aspen and alder.
- Range and time of year in Bay Area: Breeds from southeastern Alaska and British Columbia south to coastal California. Spends winters in most of its breeding range except interior British Columbia.
- Similar birds that might also be seen at Hayes Valley Farm: Red-naped Sapsuckers, but the Red-breasted Sapsucker has more red on the head and breast. They also lack the black breast-band of the other sapsuckers. We were alerted to the presence of this guy by hiss rhythmic head-banging, woodpecker-like noises. Such feeding noises are often masked by construction activity in the area.
If you see the woodpecker, check out how they hold their tail against the tree to help with balance as they vigorously bang their heads!
Find out more information about the Red-breasted Sapsucker including a recording of its call. Plus there's even more, here.
Photo by Marlin Harms, January 25, 2010
These species studies are a project of the Patterns in Nature: Urban Tracking & Nature Awareness workshops at Hayes Valley Farm, every Monday at 10:30am.
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