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Red-naped Sapsucker | Sphyrapicus nuchalis
Roodneksapspecht | Chupasavia nuquirrojo
The Red-naped Sapsucker is the sapsucker of the aspen woods of the Rocky Mountains and the ranges of the Great Basin: a black-and-white woodpecker with a red forehead, a red throat, a red nape patch and a yellowish belly. It drills rows of sap wells in willows, aspens and birches, thereby sustaining a whole community of hummingbirds, insects and other birds, while its old nest cavities are later used by other cavity nesters. In winter it migrates to the south-western United States and Mexico.
Voice
The usual call is a nasal, mewing cheer or meeah, which sounds like a complaining cat and is heard frequently on the breeding grounds; encounters around the sap wells and near the nest bring shrill, wailing series. Drumming is the clearest trait of the genus: first a short roll of a few rapid beats, then a few separate, rhythmic taps that fall further and further apart, like Morse code. In spring it likes to drum on dead branches, poles or metal signs that carry far.
Recording: Richard E. Webster — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Silver Creek, Cave Creek Canyon, Cochise County, Arizona, United States · xeno-canto
Identification
A medium-sized woodpecker with a black-and-white striped head, a red forehead and a red patch on the nape, which is sometimes small. The male has an entirely red throat, the red often breaking through the black border; the female has a white chin with red only on the lower throat. Both have a black breast band above a yellowish belly with barred flanks. The back is black with two narrow rows of white spots, and along the closed wing runs the long white stripe shared by all sapsuckers. Young birds moult largely into adult plumage as early as August, before migration.
Confusion species
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker of the north and east usually lacks the red nape patch, has a back with more white or buff barring, and in the male the red throat is completely bordered with black; the female has an entirely white throat. Where the two meet, in Alberta and British Columbia, hybrids occur. It regularly hybridises with Red-breasted Sapsucker in the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada; such birds show more red on the head. The female Williamson's Sapsucker is brown with fine barring and lacks the white wing stripe.
Habitat
Mixed mountain forest with quaking aspen, often along streams with willows, alders and birches, and open ponderosa pine forest with aspen groves; also larch forest and logged areas where broadleaved trees have been left standing. It breeds from about 300 to 3,000 metres. For its nest it prefers thick aspens weakened inside by a heart-rot fungus, so that the wood is soft while the tree itself is still alive; where aspens are absent it nests in conifers. In winter it lives in riparian woodland, orchards, parks and gardens in the lowlands.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.
Range and movements
It breeds from southern British Columbia and south-western Alberta south through the Rocky Mountains and the ranges of the Great Basin, including eastern Oregon and north-eastern California, to central Arizona and New Mexico. It is a migrant: in autumn virtually all birds leave the breeding range. They winter in southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas and further south in Mexico to the centre of the country. No subspecies are recognised.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
In June and July find an aspen wood with willows along a stream and search for trees with neat horizontal rows of fresh sap wells: sooner or later the woodpecker returns, and hummingbirds and wasps are often at the sap too. A nest can be found by the buzzing begging of the young in a thick, living aspen. On an unfamiliar sapsucker, check the nape and throat: a red nape patch and red breaking through the black throat border point to Red-naped Sapsucker.
Conservation
The IUCN rates the species as Least Concern (LC). Partners in Flight estimates the breeding population at about two million birds, and according to the Breeding Bird Survey numbers remained stable between 1966 and 2019. The main threat is the decline of aspen woodland, through logging, fragmentation, grazing by livestock and the suppression of forest fires, which lets conifers overgrow the aspens. Because Mountain Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, nuthatches and chickadees use its old cavities, its decline also affects other species.
Scientific name
Sphyrapicus nuchalis | Baird, 1858
Spencer Baird described the form in 1858 as Sphyrapicus varius var. nuchalis, a variety of Yellow-bellied Sapsucker; the type locality is the Mimbres River in New Mexico. Because the species has remained in its original genus, author and year stand without parentheses. Following genetic work by Johnson and Zink (1983), the American Ornithologists' Union recognised it as a separate species in 1985. Sphyrapicus comes from the Greek sphura 'hammer' and picus 'woodpecker'; nuchalis is modern Latin for 'of the nape', after the red nape patch.