I
was delighted when Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers stopped at our suet feeder in
October 2006 and again in 2007, most likely migrating birds. None came by in
2008, but in January 2009, a male Sapsucker came and stayed for the winter. You
can read about its interesting behavior here (no photos from that long-ago
era). A
couple of juveniles stopped by briefly in October 2009 and
in January 2010, the same male that had been our guest the previous year
returned and took up residence. You can read about its encounter with a localmockingbird.
The
same Sapsucker has returned each January since then, staying for a few months until
the weather warms and the sap runs again. (D and I have noticed that the
Sapsucker doesn’t show up in the yard until the weather gets really cold, say
below 20°F. That makes sense, of course, given its preferred diet of sap and
sap-attracted insects.)
How
do I know it’s the same bird? Well, photos are telling, of course, and I have
many, dating back to 2012. But birders, especially patch birders and back-yard
birders, are able to identify individual birds; we are close observers of
plumage and behavior. In the case of this Sapsucker, it has followed the same
route into our yard every day that I have seen it over the years: from the
neighbor’s yard to the west, stopping in the dead elm (where an old bittersweet
vine provides fruit snacks) before winging into the suet. And its behavior on
the suet is the same from day to day and year to year.
Anyway
– the point of all that is to establish that I know this particular bird very
well. Now to the interesting part.
