Red-naped sapsucker
Sphyrapicus nuchalis
Identification Tips:
- Length: 7.75? inches
- Medium-sized woodpecker
- Black head traversed by white postocular stripe extending down
neck
- Red forehead
- Red spot in postocular stripe as it meets the nape
- Pale moustachial stripe offsets black chest and black border to
throat
- Black border to throat incomplete, narrows or is broken at its
midpoint
- Black back with faint white bars
- Black wings, with white barring on flight feathers and bold white
patch on wing coverts
- Yellow breast fades to whitish lower belly and vent, and is
streaked sparsely about the flanks
- White rump
- Dark tail with black and white barring on centralmost and
outermost retricies
Adult male:
Adult female:
- Upper throat white, lower throat red
Juvenile:
- Wings and back patterned more or less like adult
- Head brownish and streaked, with weak postocular stripe and
moustachial stripe
- Pale chest barred with brown
- Yellowish belly sparsely barred and streaked with brown
- Juvenile plumage lost by mid-September
Similar species:
White patch on wing coverts sets sapsuckers apart from all
other woodpeckers. Red-naped can hybridize with Red-breasted, so
attention should be paid in zone of overlap for birds showing
unusually large amounts of red about the head or breast. Males
are distinguished from male Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers only by the
red nape spot and incomplete frame to red throat of Red-naped
Sapsucker. Females are somewhat easier to distinguish, as they
differ in these characters, as well as having quite different
throat patterns (white in Yellow-bellied, red and white in Red-
naped). It is worth noting that any sapsucker in juvenal plumage
after late fall must be a Yellow-bellied. Beware of rare hybrid
Yellow-bellied x Red-naped Sapsuckers, and the occasional Yellow-
bellied Sapsucker which may show a red nape spot.
Length and wingspan from: Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B., Zim, H.S., (1966). Birds of North America. New York: Western Publishing Company, Inc.