Red-breasted sapsucker
| Red-breasted sapsucker | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Piciformes |
| Family: | Picidae |
| Genus: | Sphyrapicus |
| Species: | S. ruber |
| Binomial name | |
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Sphyrapicus ruber (Gmelin, 1788) |
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The red-breasted sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber) is a medium-sized woodpecker of the forests of the west coast of North America.
Adults have a red head and upper chest; they have a white lower belly and rump. They are black on the back and wings with bars; they have a large white wing patch. Red-breasted sapsuckers nest in tree cavities. Northern birds migrate to the southern parts of the range; birds on the coast are often permanent residents. Like other sapsuckers, these birds drill holes in trees and eat the sap as well as insects attracted to it. They sometimes catch insects in flight; they also eat seeds and berries. These birds interbreed with the red-naped sapsucker or yellow-bellied sapsucker where their ranges overlap.
Until recently, the red-breasted sapsucker and red-naped sapsucker were considered a single species. Sapsuckers are in the Picidae, or woodpecker, family, in the order Piciformes.
The wing barring is white in both variants.
Red-breasted sapsuckers breed from southeast Alaska and British Columbia south through the Pacific Coast Ranges of western Washington and Oregon and northern California. The breeding habitat is usually forest that includes pine, hemlock, Douglas-fir, fir, and spruce, though they are known to use other woodland habitats.
The northern birds that breed in migrate south in the winter, and individuals that breed in inland and upland locales often move to the coastal lowlands in winter, where the weather is milder. Winter habitat can be deciduous or coniferous woodland. This species’ winter range extends south to Baja California in Mexico.
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Wikipedia