Some of you may recall the saga of Sam the sad-sack sapsucker, the
male that drummed on the telephone pole across the street from our
house. I predicted poor Sam would never attract a mate in the middle
of Seattle, even in a fairly nicely wooded neighborhood like this
with a wooded ravine behind our house. Well, was I wrong!

Sam the surpassingly sexy sapsucker now appears to have a mate, and I
assume they are nesting somewhere nearby. Both birds come
individually to a small (5-inch diameter) European birch tree in our
back yard, where they have made a nice series of sap wells about 20
feet above the ground. One or the other is present numerous times
during the day. I was first apprised of this when I called home from
Oklahoma, and Netta informed me that she had been watching a
sapsucker on the birch tree, and another one flew in as it flew away.
So presumably there are two, although I haven't seen both at the same
time, and being monomorphic, I can't tell them apart. But each time
I've seen one fly away from the birch, it's going in the same
direction, so I strongly suspect a nest. If so, four species of
woodpeckers are nesting in the neighborhood, perhaps not surprising
as there are a lot of trees!

Finally, I was excited to see an Anna's Hummingbird feeding from the
sap wells a few days ago. Hummingbirds are well known to do that
(Broad-tailed in the Rockies at Red-naped wells, Ruby-throated in the
East at Yellow-bellied wells, Anna's and Rufous in California at Red-
breasted wells), but I hadn't seen it before.
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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