Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Royal Botanical Gardens. Hendrie Valley, Burlington ON. January 4 2022.  I took advantage of this, the second of two bright and sun-filled days, to do some birding. Days that followed a string of low-slung grey ones and there was a weather forecast of rain, snow, wind and cloud to come.

Sun had pushed aside much of the latest snow and a high, south-facing forest bank must have been a bit of a warm spot, for it was busy with Black-capped Chickadees, Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, White-breasted Nuthatches and a couple of Carolina Wrens.  As is typical of the species, the wrens were drawn to dark recesses to hunt, in this case the underside of a fallen log, turning and tossing leaves,  a place likely to be harbouring food.

Winter still held firmly to the rest of the valley and I was surprised to hear, and get a short glimpse of a Belted Kingfisher patrolling the length of the creek. You’d think it would have flown south a few weeks ago.  All ponds, puddles and backwaters were sheeted with smooth and flawless ice, not the sort you could punch a stick through; I tried. The creek will probably stay open, unless it gets really cold, but if I could give advice to the kingfisher it would be to leave now.

This group of Mallards had gathered on the riverside ice, they were just quietly whiling away the day apparently disinclined to do much and were an attractive sight, eye-catching as much for the pattern of orange feet as for the males’ iridescent bottle-green heads.

I had pretty much concluded that the Carolina Wrens were the best of the day. But I met a young birder photographer and asked whether she’d seen much that was camera-worthy. Not a lot, she said, but there’s a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker just up there. And as if to deflect any probable skepticism on my part she showed me some photos of it that she’d taken.

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are infrequent sightings, just-passing-through birds around here; they nest a little bit north of us as a rule and winter quite a bit south. A few off-season strays always show up and a friend has a young sapsucker visiting his bird-feeder this winter, it’s surprising and yet unsurprising. Of all of our woodpecker species it is perhaps the drabbest, and the young ones, which this was, are almost shabby. But setting aside any prejudices based on appearance, it was a delight, partly because of the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers’ winter scarcity and partly because spotting it was the work of much younger ears and eyes than mine. I am grateful to her for telling me about it. It made my day, My Bird of the Day.