Red-breasted Sapsucker

My late father was a real birdwatcher. Not a twitcher; no checklists to tick off or rare species hunting expeditions for him, not even binoculars or a birdbook. He simply knew his bird species in the urban fringe of a smallish town, Schiedam in Holland, where both he and I grew up. He most certainly delighted in seeing something for him unusual, like an owl, a spoonbill or a woodpecker, on his daily walk to work or the occasional, rare stroll with the kids, but he derived most pleasure out of simply watching birds in action. Be they sparrows, tits or finches, didn’t matter what. As long as they were doing something. Feeding, fighting, singing, nesting… and he could do that for hours, days on end. My father would have been in his element here on the Sunshine Coast in BC, and stunned by the action and diversity we see here on an almost daily basis even in the small local area of Langdale near Gibsons where we live. And especially fascinated by activity and colour of our sapsuckers, one of our local woodpeckers and most certainly one of my favourite birds.

Living “rural” has its distinct advantages but also its drawbacks, one of which is what to do when you have responded to that gut-instinct of rescuing a bird threatened to be savaged by an animal, a dog or a cat, and it is damaged. Back in my “old” days, as a boy in a town, there was always some animal care facility about which would take it off your hands and nurse it back to health (or so we believed). Easy in a town, easy in a small country like Holland, not so easy in Canada, BC or even the Coast. Facilities are either non-existent or involve serious travel… for what?

What reminded me of all this was the sight earlier this week of a red-breasted sapsucker being mauled by the dog from across the road. Of course the little boy in me immediately swung into action; I chased the dog away, 4, 5 times, and as a result was left with a sapsucker with what looked like a broken wing. So I took it home of course and put it in a cage with a blanket over the top to calm it down and let it recover a bit. But what the hell was the adult in me supposed to do with that now?

Red-breasted sapsuckers  (Sphyrapicus ruber) are an interesting and somewhat unusual bird. It is a migrating bird and yet it is not (some do for short or very long distances, some don’t, other than a short distance or not at all), seems to hybridize happily with its cousin, the yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius)   “where the areas overlap” according to the literature, which means in practice more or less everywhere where the red-breasted sapsucker is concerned here,  and two distinct variants which you can only really tell apart by a close on-the-spot comparison, side-by-side, and which completely goes to pot if one of them (or, god forbid, even both..) somewhere along the line has hybridized, a first generation hybrid or stems from a hybrid  which is much more often than you’d hope. Try and distinguish the dirty yellowish-white breast of the red-breasted  sapsucker (yes it hasn’t actually got a red breast, more a red chin or rather a feather beard) from the light whitish-yellow breast of a yellow bellied sapsucker? Now guess what colour breast a hybrid has…..

The real fun with this bird is watching it feed, not its intelligence; why else do I end up every year with a couple of bodies in my planter, having crashed into the window which doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to, nor has the reflection of any tree whatsoever.

Oddly enough for a bird associated with coniferous forests the sapsucker tends to prefer trees with a heavy, sweet sap flow such as maple, rowan or birch, all of which are broadleaf trees, carefully selects a few of these, usually not too far from the nesting hole, and sticks with these all season and year after year. It pecks a hole through the bark into the wood until the sap oozes out. Eats a bit and flies on to the next selected tree where it does the same, then returns to (one of) the previously pecked hole(s) to see whether insects have got stuck in the oozing sap, picks them out and eats them. A carnivore with a sweet tooth… Oddly enough it tends to leave my apples, plums and cherries alone, which are also sweet, juicy and attract insects when pecked, but that may be because my garden has plenty of  birch and rowan in and around it and is never short of gluttonous insects with the potential of getting stuck in the sap. Finding which trees it feeds on is a singe… look for trees with a band of regularly closely spaced holes, a bit like a giant game of tic tac toe, sit down and wait. The red-breasted sapsucker will turn up, has no fear and flutters and feeds even at very close distances, so there is plenty of opportunity to observe its habits in great detail and for hours on end. Watch it leave, by all means, but keep looking at that freshly pecked hole. Chances are that next its regular companion, the Rufous hummingbird, will turn up and have a quick feed of that freshly oozing sap. More often than not you’ll find the two together, the Rufous being the most opportunist, aggressive and territorial of our two species of hummingbird. My father would have loved the sapsucker. Except for its “song” which sounds a bit like a baby crying, but fortunately it only emits that occasionally and in short bursts and then carries on feeding as is its main preoccupation.

So what to do with this sapsucker with what looked like a broken wing? The little boy solution, feed it bread and milk as a paste until it recovers, wasn’t going to work, but spare ribs with jam seemed a trite excessive… So I embarked on my typical solution for most problems: sit down with a couple of alcohol-free beers, think and wait…. See whether it resolves itself. It usually does one way or another

Within half an hour, from underneath the blanket, a heavy metal pecking sound emerged. It started pecking at the bars, kept that up for a while and then.. nothing! A quick peek under the blanket showed that it had hung itself to the side of the cage, head down, beak tucked under a wing and was asleep… A couple of hours later I removed the cage. The sapsucker fluttered a bit, still not much into flying by the looks of it but the wing “sat” better. Probably more bruised than broken…phew!

After dark I gently and carefully lifted the bird and moved it to one of its favoured feeding trees. At least I hope it was his and not another’s… Tucked it into a fork in the tree at suitable height and shelter and left it for the night to return in the morning to see whether it was still there or thereabouts. And it wasn’t. Neither was the body, nor were there any feathers or any other evidence or suggestion that it had been picked off by some predator… it probably recovered sufficiently and moved on when the sun came up.

For once the little boy and the adult in me seemed to have worked in unison and been successful. But I’ll try and think twice next time when that brat in me tries to take over… let nature run its course… even if that means that damn neighbour’s dog..