Hey Tyler I have seen them eat Poison Ivy berries
Danny Poet
Queenstown ,Md
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:32:38 -0800
From: <jtylerbell...>
Subject: [MDBirding] Sapsucker behavior
To: <mdbirding...>
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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