While I was birding Chincoteague over the Thanksgiving holiday I noted a
sapsucker mixing it up with a flock of robins chowing down on American
Holly berries at the visitor center. I've seen red-bellied woodpeckers
doing this often but I, too, was surprised at the sapsucker.
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 11:32 AM, James Tyler Bell <jtylerbell...>wrote:
>
> We have a large persimmon tree next to our lab building here in Edgewater.
> Perhaps the same Yellow-bellied Sapsucker likes to hang around the tree in
> the winter. Today, I noticed the sapsucker up in the very top of the tree
> eating a persimmon. I've always seen them tapping wells in trees then
> attending them later but never seen this particular behavior before. Has
> anyone seen this?
>
> Birds of North America online has this about their diet but nothing
> specific about fruit species consumed:
>
> Major Food Items
> Sap (from variety of perennial plant species), insects, also bast (inner
> bark [cork cambium, phloem] and cambium layers), fruit, and seeds (Beal
> 1911).
>
> Quantitative Analysis
> Based on analysis of 313 stomach contents (including some Red-naped
> Sapsuckers; Beal 1911), 50.7% plant matter and 49.3% animal matter; of
> plant material, 28.1% of total food matter fruit (71.3% of diet in Nov),
> 16.5% cambium, and 6.1% miscellaneous plant parts; of animal matter, 34.3%
> of total food matter ants (Formicidae; 68% for May�Aug), 6.0% beetles
> (Coleoptera), 5.4% spiders (Araneida) and miscellaneous insects (mayflies
> [Ephemeroptera]; stoneflies [Plecoptera]; grasshoppers, crickets and tree
> hoppers [Orthoptera]; caterpillars and moths [Lepidoptera]; and flies
> [Diptera]), 2.6% wasps (Hymenoptera), and <1% true bugs (Hemiptera). Diet
> appears to shift according to time of year (see Food selection and storage,
> below). Cambium ingestion peaked in Apr, representing 48% of diet at that
> time, but analyses conservative since much fluid passes almost immediately
> out of stomach prior to stomach-content analysis (Beal 1911). Sap probably
> makes up 20% of diet annually (Short 1982), but at times may be 100% of
> diet (L. S. Eberhardt pers. comm.).
>
>
> Tyler Bell
> <jtylerbell...>
> California, Maryland
>
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Rick Borchelt
College Park, MD
preferred personal email: rborchelt |AT| gmail |DOT| com
http://leplog.wordpress.com
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