Sphyrapicus ruber
The Red-breasted Sapsucker is one of four species in the genus Sphyrapicus, the sapsuckers, which are a distinctive group of North American woodpeckers with a peculiar and unique foraging strategy. These industrious birds create rows of small openings in the bark of specific trees to allow the sweet, nutritious sap to flow, much like a syrup maker tapping a maple tree. They then lap the sap straight from the tree with their specialized tongues which are covered in stiff bristles that hold the sugary liquid in much the same manner as a paintbrush.
Sapsuckers maintain these openings or “wells” throughout the breeding season, regularly expanding existing holes, opening new ones, and even switching between tree species to take advantage of changes in sugar flow through the season. Conifers, with their evergreen foliage, start flowing first and are first to be tapped. When aspens start leafing out, sapsuckers switch their efforts to these trees instead.
In creating their wells, Red-breasted Sapsuckers also provide an irresistible opportunity for other animals with a taste for sweets. Many birds, especially warblers and hummingbirds, are drawn to sapsucker wells. Researchers have also reported a range of mammals visiting this species’ wells, including chipmunks, squirrels, and jumping mice. Insects feed at these wells too, especially butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, and ants.
Red-breasted Sapsuckers have another important role that they play in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Like other woodpeckers, Red-breasted Sapsuckers nest in cavities that they excavate in trees. These birds typically do not reuse nest cavities from year to year, so vacant cavities from previous years are available to a huge number of species that require cavities to nest in, but can’t excavate them for themselves. There are a number of these secondary cavity-nesting birds that overlap with the Red-breasted Sapsucker, including the Red-breasted Nuthatch, Tree Swallow, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, and many others. Some mammals, such as red squirrels and northern flying squirrels, also use sapsucker cavities.
Because Red-breasted Sapsuckers sometimes eat fruit in agricultural settings, they were once persecuted as a pest species in orchards. However, since the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918, these birds are protected, and persecution is not considered a current threat. Overall, regional populations appear stable, but forestry practices that remove snags and logging in old-growth forest may decrease this species’ abundance in specific areas.
The Red-breasted Sapsucker is often found in the old-growth Douglas fir forests of the Pacific Northwest. Unregulated logging began in the 1800s, and over 70 percent of this ancient habitat, with trees hundreds of feet tall and over 1,000 years old, has been lost. Logging of old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest continues today, though it is now much more sustainably managed.
Birds like the Red-breasted Sapsucker need our help to overcome the threats they face. At ABC, we’re inspired by the wonder of birds and driven by our responsibility to find solutions to meet their greatest challenges. With science as our foundation, and with inclusion and partnership at the heart of all we do, we take bold action for birds across the Americas.
For many years, ABC has worked to conserve cavity-nesting birds, including the Flammulated Owl and Williamson’s Sapsucker, on private ponderosa pine lands in the Pacific Northwest. We previously helped the Columbia Land Trust purchase 115 acres of a 418-acre wildlife corridor on Mill Creek Ridge in north-central Oregon. The Mill Creek Ridge Natural Area provides important winter habitat for the Red-breasted Sapsucker.
The palette of the Red-naped Sapsucker is similar to that of many other woodpeckers, with largely black upperparts patterned with white markings and largely white to pale-yellow underparts decorated sparingly with black along the flanks. Like its close relative the Red-naped Sapsucker, the Red-breasted has a large white patch on the rump and two rows of white spots running down the back between the wings. This sapsucker stands out in the extensive red plumage covering the head and breast, and a contrasting white stripe running from the beak and across the cheek, like a long mustache. Both sexes share the same plumage.
Like many other woodpeckers, the Red-breasted Sapsucker advertises its vigor and its territory boundaries by drumming on tree trunks and other resonant surfaces. However, the sapsuckers have a telltale drumming sequence, starting with an irregular series of rolling knocks, followed by a brief pause and then slower taps. The Red-breasted Sapsucker also gives a number of calls including a nasal Waa Call used as a mild alert, and a harsh, whining Squeal Call used mostly by males during the breeding season.
Credit: Andrew Spencer, XC76216. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/76216.
Credit: Kristie Nelson, XC363352. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/363352.
Credit: Thomas G. Graves, XC145718. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/145718.
The Red-breasted Sapsucker uses a wide range of wooded habitats, from temperate coniferous rainforest to deciduous riparian woodlands to high montane forests to orchards.
Specific Area
Pacific coast of Canada, the United States, and northern Baja California
Range Detail
The Red-breasted Sapsucker is a bird of the humid temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest, ranging along the West Coast of North America from southern Alaska south to northern Baja California. Though resident year-round over most of its range, there are migratory breeding populations in the Sierra Nevada of California and the interior of British Columbia. Nonbreeding birds range throughout California and into Nevada and Baja California.
Did you know?
Though many species feed at Red-breasted Sapsucker wells, Anna’s and Rufous Hummingbirds seem to have an especially strong relationship with this species. Both hummingbirds are known to follow Red-breasted Sapsuckers to and between well sites, to nest near wells, and may even time their migration to match the sapsuckers’!
Conspicuous and active, the Red-breasted Sapsucker is quite unique in the riparian woodlands and aspen groves of the Pacific Northwest, with its loud cries, distinctive drum pattern, and tell-tale grids of neatly arranged holes circling the trunks of thin-barked trees. This bird is also an agile flyer, with its relatively long and narrow wings closer to those of a flycatcher than most other northern woodpeckers, allowing them to gracefully capture insects midair, an ability reminiscent of the equally distinctive Lewis’s Woodpecker.
The Red-breasted Sapsucker primarily eats sap and insects during the breeding season, but, especially in the nonbreeding season, will also eat fruit and seeds. Sapsuckers often arrive on their breeding grounds before sap has started to flow, and may first eat bast, the nutritious layer of living tissue under the outer bark of a tree, before the sap starts to flow.
Red-breasted Sapsuckers are socially and sexually monogamous and are thought to mate for life. Oddly, courtship displays are quite similar to the agonistic displays birds of the same sex use to mediate conflicts. These include raising and lowering the head, drooping the wings, and raising the feathers on the crown of the head and throat.
While Red-naped and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers typically nest in live hardwood trees, Red-breasted Sapsuckers prefer dead or dead parts of conifers, although they will nest in dead hardwoods as well, such as aspen, bigleaf maple, and Pacific madrone. As with other woodpeckers, eggs are placed directly on top of wood chips created by pecking at the inside of the cavity. Both sexes participate in excavating, but males do most of the work. Like the other sapsuckers, Red-breasteds usually do not reuse nest cavities, but nest trees may be used for several years.
Females lay four to seven white eggs, which both parents incubate for about two weeks. Males roost in the nest cavity and presumably incubate overnight. The young hatch out of their eggs after one to two weeks, and both parents help to brood and feed the young. Nestlings are mostly fed insects, especially ants, which parents may dip in sap before feeding to their offspring.
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