Tyler, I haven't seen this, but persimmons are very sweet when ripe. They
may also be the kind of fruit that concentrates sugars after a frost. I can
see why they would would be appealing to a variety of birds and mammals.
They are dreadful when underripe, but delicious when fully ripe, which for
a persimmon is a few minutes prior to rotting!
Pat
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Rick Borchelt <rborchelt...> wrote:
> 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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>>
>
>
>
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> Rick Borchelt
> College Park, MD
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