The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a woodpecker that farms its food. Rather than simply drilling for insects, it chisels neat, orderly rows of small "wells" in the bark of living trees and returns to them to feed on the sap that oozes out, along with the insects the sweet sap traps. These tidy horizontal lines of holes, drilled in birches, maples, and many other trees, are a sure sign of the bird even when it is out of sight. Boldly patterned in black and white, it shows a red forehead (with a red throat in males) and only a faint yellow wash on the belly.
The sap wells maintained by sapsuckers are an important early-season food source for other creatures — hummingbirds, warblers, squirrels, and insects all visit them, and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds returning north are thought to rely on sapsucker wells before flowers bloom. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers breed in the deciduous and mixed forests of northern Michigan, migrate through the rest of the state, and are only rare winter lingerers, since sap is hard to come by in the cold.
Drills orderly rows of shallow wells in living trees and feeds on the sap and the insects it traps, supplementing with insects gleaned or caught in flight and with fruit and berries. Its sap wells also feed hummingbirds, other birds, and mammals, making the sapsucker a keystone provider in the spring woods.
Those tidy horizontal lines of small holes are the work of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which drills "wells" to feed on sap and trapped insects. The wells rarely harm healthy trees seriously and also feed hummingbirds and other wildlife.
Yes. Unlike most woodpeckers, the sapsucker relies heavily on tree sap, maintaining and revisiting its rows of wells, and eating the insects the sticky sap attracts along with fruit and gleaned insects.
It breeds in the northern forests in the warm months and migrates through the rest of the state in spring and fall. Because sap is scarce in cold weather, only a few linger into winter.
Fledglings are a dingy brown-and-buff version of the adult with no red on the crown or throat, though the white wing stripe is already obvious. Many keep that brownish look into late fall, later than most young woodpeckers.
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