eggs were quite buried in chips and rotten wood. But when they were
uncovered, they were seen to lie, seven of them, in two regular lines,
four in the front rank with sides touching evenly, and three in the
rear with points dove-tailed between.”
Harry S. Swarth (1924) also found some lofty nests in the Skeena River
region of northern British Columbia; he writes: “During May and June
a number of nests were found, mostly through seeing the old birds
carrying food to the young. One was drilled in a live poplar, the tree
a straight column with no branching limb save at the very top, the nest
some seventy feet from the ground. Another was in a dead birch, sixty
feet up. Many others were noted, all in birch or poplar, mostly dead
trees, and no nest was less than fifty feet above the ground. One male
bird collected had the abdomen bare of feathers. It obviously had been
incubating eggs.”
_Eggs._--The red-breasted sapsucker lays four to seven eggs, usually
five or six. Bendire (1895) describes them, as follows: “The eggs,
when fresh and before blowing, like those of all Woodpeckers, show the
yolk through the translucent shell, giving them a beautiful pinkish
appearance, as well as a series of straight lines or streaks, of a
more pronounced white than the rest of the shell, running toward and
converging at the smaller axis of the egg. After blowing, the pink
tint will be found to have disappeared and the egg changed to a pure,
delicate white, the shell showing a moderate amount of luster. There is
considerable variation in their shape, running as they do through all
the different ovates to an elongated ovate.”
The measurements of 54 eggs average 23.61 by 17.51 millimeters; the
eggs showing the four extremes measure =25.40= by 17.78, 24.13 by
=18.54=, =21.84= by 17.27, and 23.11 by =16.26= millimeters.
_Food._--Mr. Neff (1928) lists 67 species of fruit, forest, and
ornamental trees and shrubs that are known to have been tapped by
the red-breasted sapsucker, showing that this species is not at all
particular as to what kind of sap it drinks. A total of 64 stomachs
were examined, representing every month in the year. “The stomach
analyses revealed 40.7 percent of vegetable food, and 52.53 percent
insect food.” Ants formed the bulk of the insect food, running as
high as 80 percent in July; other items were boring beetles and their
larvae, other beetles, weevils, caddiceflies, aphids, various flies,
mites, and spiders. Fruit averaged less than 4 percent of the food and
included elderberries, wild cherries, haw and dogwood berries. “No
cultivated fruits were taken and seeds were almost a minus quantity.
True cambium or soft inner bark averaged 31.35 percent; most of
this was taken between October and April. Other bark, fibre, and
miscellaneous vegetable matter averaged 5.14 percent.”
Bendire (1895) says: “Their food consists principally of grubs, larvæ
of insects, ants, various species of lepidoptera, which they catch
on the wing, like Flycatchers, and berries. * * * They seem to be
especially fond of wild strawberries.”
_Behavior._--Charles A. Allen, of Nicasio, Calif., wrote to Major
Bendire (1895): “These Woodpeckers are very fond of hanging to
telegraph poles, and may be found drumming along the line of the
Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra Nevadas, where you can hear
them beating a tattoo for hours at a time. If you try to approach one,
as soon as a certain distance is reached the bird will sidle to the
opposite side of the pole, and then keep peeping around the corner at
whatever has excited his suspicions, and as soon as it thinks it has a
good opportunity to escape it will fly away with a shrill cry, and keep
the pole in line between it and yourself for protection. Here they are
very shy, and remain very quiet if discovered.”
According to Bendire’s own experience--
“These birds are not at all shy during the breeding season,
allowing you to approach them closely; but they have an
extraordinarily keen sense of hearing. I frequently tried
to sneak up to a tree close to my house which I knew had
been selected by a pair of these birds, to watch them at
work, but I was invariably detected by the bird, no matter
how carefully I tried to creep up, before I was able to get
within 30 yards, even when she was at work on the inside of
the cavity and could not possibly see me. The bird would
cease working at once, her head would pop out of the hole
for an instant, and the surroundings would be surveyed
carefully. If I kept out of sight and perfectly still, she
would probably begin working again a few minutes afterward,
but if I moved ever so little, without even making the
least noise, in my own estimation, she would notice it and
stop working again at once. If the tree were approached
too closely, she would fly off, uttering at the same time
a note resembling the word ‘jay,’ or ‘chäe,’ several times
repeated, which would invariably bring the male around
also, who had in the meantime kept himself busy in some
other tree, either drumming or hunting for food. While the
female was at work on the inside of the excavation the male
would fly to the entrance, from time to time, and look in;
* * * and at other times he would hang, for five or ten
minutes even, just below the entrance to the burrow, in a
dreamy sort of study, perfectly motionless and seemingly
dazed.”
Mr. Neff (1928) writes:
They have not been found to be particularly quiet excepting
during the hotter summer months. At other times they have
been neither noticeably noisy nor silent. The outstanding
features of their behavior have proven to be pugnacity and
noise during the mating season and while incubating and
feeding the young, and an extreme curiosity at other times.
In many instances the writer has located them by utilizing
this curiosity; sitting motionless on a log or rock after
failing to find them, any sapsucker in the community
would soon make its presence known by a characteristic
interrogative call, at first from a distance, gradually
drawing nearer.
In winter they seem to be quite belligerent, for on several
occasions one has been located by the angry noise as if
of a pitched battle; on closer investigation it would be
found that the sapsucker was attempting to drive some other
woodpecker, generally the Gairdner, from some favorite tree.
_Voice._--Bendire (1895) says: “While the nest was being rifled of its
contents both parents flew about the upper limbs of the tree, uttering
a number of different sounding, plaintive sounds, like ‘peeye,’
‘pinck,’ and ‘peurr,’ some of these resembling somewhat the purring of
a cat when pleased and rubbing against your leg. I used to note the
different sounds in a small notebook at the very time, but scarcely
ever put them down alike; each time they appeared a trifle different to
the ear, and it is a hard matter to express them exactly on paper.”
Mr. Dawson (Dawson and Bowles, 1909) says that while he was chopping
out the nest the birds “made frequent approaches from a neighboring
tree, crying _kee-a, kee-aa_, in helpless bewilderment. * * * When all
was over, they raised a high, strong _qué-oo,--qeé-oo_, never before
heard, and reminding one generically of the Red-headed Woodpecker of
boyhood days.”
SPHYRAPICUS THYROIDEUS THYROIDEUS (Cassin)
WILLIAMSON’S SAPSUCKER
HABITS
Williamson’s sapsucker is not only one of our most unique woodpeckers
in its striking coloration, but it has an interesting history. Owing
to the radical difference in appearance between the two sexes, they
were for some time regarded as two distinct species. The female was
the first to be described by John Cassin (1852, p. 349), based on a
specimen collected by John G. Bell in Eldorado County, Calif. Under
the name black-breasted woodpecker (_Melanerpes thyroideus_), Cassin
describes and figures (1854) the adult female as the male of the
species and says of the female: “Similar to the male, but with the
colors more obscure, and the black of the breast of less extent and not
so deep in shade,” which is a very fair description of the immature
female. The male was discovered and described and figured by Dr.
Newberry (1857, p. 89, pl. 34) under the name _Picus williamsonii_,
based on a specimen collected by him on August 23, 1855, on the shores
of Klamath Lake, Oreg. Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence (1860) give a very
good description of an adult male, as the male of the species, but say
“female with the chin white instead of red,” which, of course, is the
immature male. Thus we have the adult of each sex regarded as the male
of a species, and the young bird of each sex regarded as the female
of a species. With careless, or improper, sexing of specimens, such
an error might easily occur, but it is remarkable that it remained so
long undiscovered. Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence (1860) describe the male
as _Sphyrapicus williamsonii_ Baird, Williamson’s woodpecker, and the
female as _Sphyrapicus thyroideus_ Baird, brown-headed woodpecker. J.
G. Cooper (1870), in the Geological Survey of California, edited by
Baird, follows the same error but calls the female the round-headed
woodpecker. Even Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, in their history of
North American Birds, had not discovered the error, for they use
substantially the same nomenclature.
It remained for Henry W. Henshaw (1875) to discover the true
relationship of the two supposed species and clear up the previous
misunderstanding. He writes: “While near Fort Garland, I obtained
abundant proof of the specific identity of the two birds in question;
_williamsonii_ being the male of _thyroideus_. Though led to suspect
this, from finding the two birds in suspicious proximity, it was some
time before I could procure a pair actually mated. A nest was at length
discovered, excavated in the trunk of a live aspen, and both the parent
birds were secured as they flew from the hole, having just entered with
food for the newly hatched young.”
Mr. Ridgway (1877) comments on the discovery as follows:
A suspicion that the two might eventually prove to be
different plumages of one species several times arose in
our mind during the course of our field-work, the chief
occasion for which was the very suggestive circumstance
that both were invariably found in the same woods, and
had identical manners and notes, while they also agreed
strictly in all the details of form and proportions, as
well as in the bright gamboge-yellow color of the belly.
Our theory that _thyroideus_ was perhaps the _young_, and
_williamsoni_ the _adult_, proved erroneous, however; and
it never occurred to us that the differences might be
sexual, an oversight caused chiefly by the circumstance
of our having seen in collections many specimens of
_thyroideus_ with a red streak on the throat and marked
as males, while the type specimen of _williamsoni_ had a
white streak on the throat and was said to be a female. We
were thus entirely misled by the erroneous identification
of the sex in these specimens. We gave the matter up,
however, only after shooting a very young specimen of what
was undoubtedly _williamsoni_, and another of _thyroideus_,
both of which very closely resembled the adults of the
same forms, a circumstance which at once convinced us that
the differences could not depend on age; so we finally
concluded that the two must be distinct.
All observers seem to agree that this woodpecker is confined to the
higher elevations in the mountains among the pines, in sharp contrast
to the haunts of the red-breasted sapsucker at lower levels among the
deciduous trees.
Joseph Grinnell (1908), referring to the San Bernardino Mountains,
in southern California, says: “This Williamson sapsucker appeared to
be restricted to the Canadian zone and upper edge of Transition. We
found it only among the tamarack pines on the slopes and ridges of San
Gorgonio peak, and among the silver firs, tamarack and yellow pines
around Bluff lake. In the former locality the species was common for
a woodpecker, especially around Dry Lake, 9,000 feet altitude, where
several nests were found.”
_Courtship._--Charles W. Michael (1935) noted the mating behavior of a
male Williamson’s sapsucker, which had just left a fresh nest-hole, as
follows:
He sounded his harsh call several times. Seemingly in
answer to his call the female appeared. This was the
first we had seen of the female. The female examined the
nest hole, flew up on a branch and uttered a series of
low notes. The male joined her, alighting a foot away and
uttering a series of low chuckling notes. While giving
these notes he strutted along the limb with wing-tips
and tail jerking rapidly. As he approached his mate
she crouched low on the limb and the mating act was
accomplished. The act lasted several seconds before the
birds separated to perch side by side on a limb. After a
minute or so the female flew off through the woods and the
male went into the nest hole. In about five minutes the
female came to the nest hole and again uttered her soft
coaxing notes. The male came out of the hole and both birds
flew to a limb where again the mating act was consummated.
The male returned to the nest. In our two-hour watch the
female only went to the nest hole to call the mate out.
_Nesting._--Dr. Grinnell (1908) says of its nesting in the San
Bernardino Mountains:
Tamarack pines were selected as nest trees, usually old
ones with the core dead and rotten but with a live shell
on the outside. In one found June 22, 1905, there were
four holes drilled one above the other about eighteen
inches apart, and one of these holes contained three small
young and two infertile eggs. * * * Later on in the same
day another nest was found similarly located containing
four half-fledged young. A nest with half-grown young was
found in the same locality, June 14, 1906; and on June
26 of the same year a nest twenty feet up in a half-dead
tamarack held five two-thirds-grown young and one rotten
egg. So that a full set of eggs probably varies from four
to six in number. On June 18, 1907, a nest with small
young was located ten feet up in an exceptionally large
nearly dead tamarack pine. This was one of the lowest of a
series of forty-seven well-formed holes of similar external
appearance, which penetrated this one tree trunk on all
sides up to an estimated height of thirty-five feet.
W. L. Dawson (1923) writes: “One soon comes to recognize the rigid
requirements of the Williamson Sapsucker in the matter of nesting
sites. Given a pine which is beginning to die at the top, usually in
a fairly sheltered situation, and a pair of birds will adopt it for
a permanent home. They will occupy it from year to year, or perhaps
the year around, nesting twice in a season; and a long occupation is
evinced by a trunk riddled with holes at all levels. One such ‘family
tree,’ closely examined, had 38 holes, apparently complete and fit for
habitation or incubation. At the time of our visit, on June 19th, the
male was industriously drilling a new excavation at a height of 45
feet.”
Major Bendire (1895) says:
I obtained my first set of eggs of this species on June 3,
1883, about 9 miles north of Fort Klamath, in the open pine
forest on the road to Crater Lake. It consisted of five
eggs, slightly incubated. The nesting site was excavated
in a partly decayed pine whose entire top for some 20 feet
was dead; the height of the excavation from the ground was
about 50 feet. The man climbing the tree reported it to be
about 8 inches deep and about 5 inches wide at the bottom,
and freshly made. A second set, of six fresh eggs, was
taken June 12 of the same year, about 12 miles north of
the Post, at a still higher altitude than the first one.
It came also out of a pine about 40 feet from the ground.
A third nest, found a week later, near the same place,
contained five young, just hatched. This nest was in a
dead aspen, about 20 feet from the ground. Only one brood
is raised, and, like the other two species, it is only a
summer resident in the vicinity of Fort Klamath.
Other observers have found nests in lodgepole pines, red firs, and
larches at various heights from 5 to 60 feet above ground but always in
conifer associations.
_Eggs._--Bendire (1895) says: “The number of eggs laid to a set varies
from three to seven, sets of five or six being most often found. These,
like all woodpecker’s eggs, are pure china-white in color; the shell
is close grained, rather thin, and only slightly glossy. In shape
they vary from ovate to elongate ovate, and a few approach an ovate
pyriform, a shape apparently not found in the eggs of other species
of this genus.” The measurements of 30 eggs average 23.54 by 17.23
millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =25.91= by
17.27, 24.1 by =18.3=, and =20.1= by =15.4= millimeters.
_Young._--Both parents assist in the duties of incubation, but
the length of time required for this function does not seem to be
definitely known; both sexes also help in feeding the young. Dr. J.
C. Merrill (1888) says, of two nests that he watched for some time:
“The males brought food about twice as often as did the females, and
frequently removed the excrement of the young on leaving the nest,
alighting on the nearest tree for a moment to drop it and to clean
their bills; I did not see either of the females remove any excreta.
About four feet above one of the holes was another occupied by a pair
of pigmy nuthatches, but neither species paid any attention to the
other when they happened to arrive with food at the same time.”
Dr. Grinnell (1908) writes: “We usually located the nests by watching
the movements of the parent birds, which flew from their foraging
places, often far distant, direct to the nest tree. The young uttered
a whinnying chorus of cries when fed, and the adults, though generally
very quiet, had a not loud explosive cry, more like the distant squall
of a red-tailed hawk. The bill and throat of an adult male, shot as it
was approaching a nest, was crammed with large wood ants, not the kind,
however, that are common at lower altitudes and smell so foully.”
Charles W. Michael (1935) watched a nest containing young, in the
Yosemite region, of which he says:
When we arrived, about ten o’clock, both parent birds were
bringing food. We watched the birds for an hour and a half
and in this period of time the male made nine trips to the
nest hole and the female made seven trips. The young were
small, as the parent birds went completely into the nest
hole. The birds, male and female, always came onto the tree
trunk above the nest hole and hitched jerkily downward
until on a level with the hole. They landed anywhere
between five and fifteen feet above the hole; the female
was likely to land nearest to the hole. * * * About every
other trip excrement was carried from the nest. When the
male cleaned nest he carried the feces away and dropped
them some distance from the nest. When the female cleaned
nest she came to the entrance from within, looked about and
then dropped the refuse before leaving the nest hole.
_Plumages._--The most remarkable characteristic of this woodpecker is
the striking difference in the plumages of the two sexes at all ages,
from the first plumage of the young bird to its maturity; in most
birds the sexes are much alike in the juvenal plumage; but the young
male Williamson’s sapsucker is much like the adult male, and the young
female is much like the adult female; the principal character common to
both sexes at all ages is the white rump.
These young sapsuckers are fully fledged before they leave the nest.
The young male, in juvenal plumage in summer, differs from the adult
male in having a smaller and weaker bill and softer, more blended
plumage; the black areas, except the wings and tail, which are like
those of the adult, are dull brownish black, instead of clear glossy
black; there are usually numerous elongated white spots or streaks,
more or less concealed, on the scapulars and upper back, and often a
few small whitish spots on the crown; the chin and upper throat are
white, instead of scarlet; the center of the breast and abdomen is dull
yellowish white, instead of bright “lemon-chrome”; the sides and flanks
are barred, instead of striped or spotted, with dusky.
The young female differs from the adult female in having a smaller and
weaker bill and softer plumage; the black breast patch is entirely
lacking; the breast, sides, and flanks are barred with dusky, but less
distinctly than in the adult; and the yellow of the central breast and
abdomen is much paler.
These two juvenal plumages are worn for only a short time in summer. I
have seen young males molting into their first winter plumage, which
is practically adult, as early as August 9; and young females begin
to show the increasing black breast patch as early as August 6; but
this molt is slow, or variable, and is sometimes not completed until
November or December.
Adults apparently have their complete annual molt mainly in August and
September.
_Food._--Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1928) says: “In 17 stomachs examined,
87 percent was animal matter and 13 percent vegetable. Of the animal
contents, 86 percent was ants, and cambium made up 12.55 percent of the
total food.”
Grinnell and Storer (1924) write:
In the Yosemite region the Williamson Sapsucker is closely
associated with the lodgepole pine. While this tree
seems to furnish the bird’s preferred source of forage,
practically all other species of trees within its local
range are also utilized. We saw workings attributable to
this sapsucker on the alpine hemlock, red and white firs,
Jeffrey pine, and quaking aspen.
The amount of work which this sapsucker will do upon
a single tree was impressed upon us while we were at
Porcupine Flat in early July, 1915. In that locality there
was a lodgepole pine (_Pinus murrayana_) about 60 feet
high, which showed no marks of sapsucker work previous to
the current year. The tree was in full leafy vigor and
measured 8 feet 3¼ inches in girth at 3 feet above the
ground. There were numerous live branches down to within 6
feet of the ground. Twenty-six irregularly horizontal rows
of fresh punctures were counted on one side of the trunk,
the lowest being only 18½ inches above the ground, and the
highest about 40 feet. * * *
During the winter months when sap is practically at a
standstill in the coniferous trees at high altitudes, the
Williamson Sapsucker must needs seek other fare. A few of
our own observations added to those of other naturalists
suggest that during the winter season the birds may forage
in a large part on dormant insects or on insect larvae
hidden in crevices in the bark. If such is the case,
whatever the damage done by these birds to the forest as a
whole during the summer months, it is partially offset by
their wintertime activity. In any event, the attacks of the
Williamson Sapsucker on the lodgepole pines of the central
Sierra Nevada cannot be considered as of great economic
importance, for these trees are there used little if at all
for lumber or for any other commercial purpose.
_Behavior._--Dr. J. C. Merrill (1888), at Fort Klamath, Oreg., found
this sapsucker “shy and very suspicious. A noticeable habit here is
the frequency with which it works down as well as up a trunk, and when
one dodges around a tree, in which, by the way, it is unpleasantly
expert, it is as apt to reappear twenty feet below where it was last
seen, as above. In searching for food it will often work up and down a
favorite tree repeatedly. In all its movements it is quick and active,
and gives one the impression of being thoroughly wide awake, which
impression the would-be collector is speedily convinced is correct.”
_Voice._--Mr. Michael (1935) says: “When the sapsuckers met at the
nest site they exchanged greetings in a ‘rubber doll’ tone of voice.
The nasal quaver of notes was remindful of a call often sounded by the
red-breasted sapsucker. Another call that was occasionally shouted from
the tree-tops was shrill and like that of a red-tailed hawk.”
Dr. Elliott Coues (1874) says: “It has an abrupt, explosive outcry,
much like that of other species of Woodpeckers, and also an entirely
different call note. This sounds to me like a number of rolling _r’s_,
beginning with a gutteral _k--k’-r-r-r_--each set of _r’s_ making a
long syllable. This note is leisurely given, and indefinitely repeated,
in a very low key.”