Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Breeding Male: Medium-sized woodpecker with black-and-white mottled upper parts, white rump, and yellow-washed white under parts. Red throat has black border. Head has red crown and black-and-white striped face and neck. Wings are dark with large white shoulder patches. Tail is black with black-barred, white center stripe. Female has white throat. Juvenile is browner and lacks bright head and throat pattern.

Sapsuckers get their name from the small, regularly spaced, sap wells they drill in tree trunks. The birds lick-up the oozing sap with their brush-like tongues. They also eat the insects that are attracted to the sap. The birds will continuously return to the same tree.

Photographed in the wild, Etobicoke, ON