Catching up with some Sapsuckers

     Every once in a while I am fortunate enough to be able to conduct a 30-minute stationary count during mid-day at a point in about the middle of the woods adjacent to my house.  Monday was one of those days, and my count was the 47^th half-hour count at that site since the beginning of April.  I have seen a lot of that 23.5 hours of observation at the same place in the woods over the last five-plus week.  I want to pass along a bit of natural history I observed that day focused on Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. 

     I’ve had the great fortune of watching a pair of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers establish a territory that virtually centers on my point count location.  Over the course of about two weeks in April, I watched as they took turns excavating a new cavity on a Red Maple branch that already had eight woodpecker holes in it.  Indeed, they chased away a pair of White-breasted Nuthatches that seemed to want to use one of the smaller holes on the back side of the branch.  The new Sapsucker cavity was constructed on the branch facing my count point and only about 20 yards away. 

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at entrance to nest cavity in Red Maple tree.

     As excavation neared completion, I almost laughed out loud watching the male appear from inside the cavity with mouthfuls of wood chips, spit them out in a shower, and disappear back inside for another mouthful.  In addition to watching nest excavation, I have witnessed neat interactions between the pair, including lots and lots of soft mews and other vocalizations I doubt I had ever heard.  Twice I witnessed the female visit the presumably completed nest, disappear inside for a couple of minutes and then depart again.  Once, she sat just outside the cavity and preened for over 10 minutes before going inside for a couple minutes, then emerging and flying away.  Perhaps she was laying an egg at those times.

Reaching in to dig out the back of the nest cavity.

     Monday, I did my count from 1:45 to 2:15pm.  At 1:57, I saw the female emerge from the cavity (I did not know she was in there), and fly to a tree about 50 yards away.  She defecated almost on top of me as she flew over my head, suggesting to me that she might have been in the cavity for a while.  When she landed, she issued on soft mew call that was returned from somewhere just out of site in another direction.  After two minutes, the male flew to the cavity, looked inside, then flew away out of view.  At 2:06, the female return and sat preening right outside the nest cavity.  Then at 2:10 she disappeared inside the nest.

     May their nest be successful.

For Whom Do You Cheer

Ever see a Peregrine Falcon swoop low across the mud flats and scare a flock of shorebirds into flight?  More often than not when I have seen this behavior in the company of birding friends, the others cheer when the Peregrine comes up empty.  Not me. 

I am no sadist.  I do not revel at horror movies.  I have no relatives who are vampires.  I simply appreciate the equations of nature dealing with energy intake and survival.  Namely, things have to eat to survive.  A Peregrine Falcon’s food sources include shorebirds. 

      After all, shorebirds eat, especially lots of invertebrates.  Who cheers for the worms that got away?  Who cheers for the mosquito larvae that wiggled out of the grasp of a Least Sandpiper?  I know what you’re thinking: worms and mosquitos – eewwww.   It doesn’t matter.  Live things are alive because other things used to be, but aren’t any more. 

I’m not sure if it’s something about wanting the underdog to win or an aversion to death, but lots to people seem to cheer for prey when predators are around.  In the philosophical treatise on birding “Life in the Sky with Wings,” author Jonathan Rosen substantiates this preference for prey eluding predators.  On page 144, Rosen describes accompanying a falconer who uses a pair of Harris’ Hawks to capture partridges:

…the partridge was in the shadow when I finally noticed it.  The bird was beautifully marked with black shadow lines – the whole bird looked like a painted face.  The hawks were both ten feet or so up, but they had not yet noticed the partridge.  The partridge, however, was aware of the hawks, and seemed frozen with fear I felt I could reach out and pick the bird up with my bare hands… Standing with the petrified bird at my feet and the dark raptors above, I felt not the murderous rapture I had hoped to experience in some perverse way, but a kind of bored impatience and a bit of shame.  This was not what I wanted.  My sympathy was with the partridge.

                My sympathy lies with the predator.  Watching the death part of the circle of life and death helps me feel connected to nature in all its fullness.  When a raptor stoops on avian prey, but misses, the circle of life and death is not a closed loop.  It’s like an open electrical circuit, and the current of life cannot proceed. 

               I guess cheering for either the predator or the prey is a little weird anyway.  Despite the fact that I firmly believe humans are an integral part of nature, the notion of cheering for either the falcon or the shorebird seems like I am wishing I could truly be a part of nature, but feeling at that moment like I am relegated to standing on the sidelines.

                Next time you see a Peregrine Falcon swoop across a mud flat filled with shorebirds, for whom will you cheer?

         Go bird!