Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Sphyrapicus varius

Identification Tips:

• Medium-sized woodpecker
• Black head traversed by white postocular stripe extending down the neck
• Red forehead
• Pale moustachial stripe offsets black chest and complete, thick black border to the throat
• Black back with faint white bars
• Black wings, with white barring on flight feathers and bold white patch on wing coverts
• Yellow breast fades to whitish lower belly and vent, and is streaked sparsely about the flanks
• White rump
• Dark tail with black and white barring on centralmost and outermost retricies
• Very rarely shows red nape spot

Adult male:

• Red throat

Adult female:

• White throat

• Wings and back patterned more or less like adult
• Head brownish and streaked, with weak postocular stripe and moustachial stripe
• Reddish wash on forehead
• Pale chest barred heavily with brown
• Yellowish belly sparsely barred and streaked with brown
• Juvenile plumage retained until first spring

Habitat: Woodlands, pine groves also orchards and other trees.

Diet: Sapsuckers drill orderly rows of small holes in trees for sap. They mostly eat plant matter and lesser amounts of insects, larvae and fruit.

Similar species: White patch on wing coverts sets sapsuckers apart from all other woodpeckers. Male Yellow-bellied Sapsukers are distinguished from male Red-naped only by the red nape spot and incomplete frame to red throat of Red-naped Sapsucker. Females are somewhat easier to distinguish, as they differ in these characters, as well as having quite different throat patterns (white in Yellow-bellied, red and white in Red-naped). It is worth noting that any sapsucker in juvenal plumage after late fall must be a Yellow-bellied. Beware of rare hybrid Yellow-bellied x Red-naped Sapsuckers, and the occasional Yellow-bellied Sapsucker which may show a red nape spot.

Image by permission of Dr. Daniel Sudia for educational purposes.