Sphyrapicus varius
Order Piciformes
Family Picidae
Subfamily Picinae
♂ Adult male.— Crown and throat crimson, edged with black; line from bill under eye white; back and wings black, everywhere speckled with white; broad stripe from shoulder along edge of wing white; middle tail-feathers barred with white; upper breast black; belly yellowish.
♀Adult female.— Similar, but throat white.
Immature.— Crown blackish; throat whitish; breast gray, with blackish bars.
Nest, in a hole in a tree.
Eggs, white.
In the Canadian Zone the Sapsucker is a common summer resident; elsewhere in New England and New York it is a migrant, passing north in April, and returning in late September and early October. It is occasionally found in winter in the lower Hudson Valley. On migration it is found in apple orchards, open groves, and not infrequently on shade trees about the houses. The Sapsucker breeds in Massachusetts only on Mount Greylock, and there but sparingly; but on the upland of Vermont, in northern and central New Hampshire, in the Adirondacks, and in the Maine woods, it breeds commonly.
Each pair have a “sugar orchard” of maple or birch, to which they resort constantly to drink the sap; in order to obtain it they drill small holes in successive rows, which often completely encircle the tree. Here they may be found ‘clinging to the trunk, which is already riddled with holes and perhaps dying. About them fly hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies, attracted by the sweet liquid. For a long time there was doubt as to their object in drilling the holes, many believing it was to attract insects. Mr. Bolles (“Auk,” vol. viii. p. 256) has shown that while insects do form a considerable part of their food, their chief object in drilling the holes is to get the sap. They also eat pieces of one of the inner layers of the bark. Nearly every old apple-tree gives evidence in its numerous rings of the visits of the Sapsucker. The young while in the nest are fed on insects, which the Sapsuckers often take on the wing.
On the breeding ground the Sapsucker is noisy, uttering a squealing cry like a Jay’s or Red-shouldered Hawk’s, but more subdued; it also drums on resonant bark loud enough to be heard at a considerable distance. While migrating however it rarely utters a sound, and it is only when the eye catches sight of its rather stout body, pitching from one tree to the trunk of the next, that attention is called to it. If it is an adult, the crimson crown extending over the forehead serves to identify it. The speckled back and the stripe of white which shows along the black wing, even when the wing is closed, serve to distinguish the young bird.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)