Hello Tweeters,
I'd like to add one thing to Wayne's comments on Brenda's inquiry about
Williamson's Sapsuckers feeding young.

Some woodpecker parents of nearly all N. Am. species will often split their
foraging niches when feeding young (or all year). In some cases, this means
one adult will collect food for nestlings close to the nest, collect fewer
morsels per outing, and deliver more often, while the other adult collects
larger beaksful farther from the nest, making fewer visits. This may be why
you did not see the female but saw the male multiple times.

In other cases, the adults might split the canopy horizontally, with one
feeding higher and one lower. Still another scenario is for the adults to
split the size of the feeding substrate, i.e. one adult on the branches and
one on the trunks. This has been particularly well documented in Downy
Woodpeckers, both in and out of the breeding season.

For those of you who like scientific jargon, this is called sexual niche
partitioning!

Happy woodpeckering,
Steve Shunk

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 07:46:52 -0700
From: Brenda Burnett <beaknbird at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Tweeters] Williamson's Sapsucker question
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <BAY149-w94231BD04661393A7302AB1B20 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


Hi Tweeters!

Yesterday on a hike to Bean Creek Basin, we got to watch what looked like a
male Williamson's Sapsucker coming and going to a nest hole in a snag,
feeding a very noisy brood. Would the male be doing this? I can't think
what species' female would look like that: roughly the size of a Hairy
Woodpecker, solid black back and tail, white horizontal marks on head/face,
big solid white patch along each side. Didn't get a good look at the front
throat/belly. We watched it when we went up the trail and again when we
went down. Didn't see a female at all, tho' she might've been in there with
the babes (?). So that's my question...would a male Williamson's be doing
the busy feeding job?

Also seen:
dozens of Western Tanagers (one almost mistook me for a perchable tree
branch)
American Dippers
flycatchers galore (unfortunately silent)
Yellow-Rumped Warblers in full breeding plumage
Chipping Sparrows (many!)
Hermit Thrushes
Cassin's Finch
Black Swifts
Lincoln's Sparrows
Mountain Chickadee
Golden-Crowned Kinglet
Lazuli Bunting (I think...)


Brenda Burnett

Seattle

beaknbird at hotmail dot com

--
Stephen Shunk
Paradise Birding
Sisters, OR USA
www.paradisebirding.com
541-408-1753
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20100708/d3eb9e37/attachment.htm