Yellow-bellied sapsucker
Sphyrapicus varius
Identification Tips:
- Medium-sized woodpecker
- Black head traversed by white postocular stripe extending down
neck
- Red forehead
- Pale moustachial stripe offsets black chest and complete, thick
black border to throat
- 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
- Very rarely shows red nape spot
Adult male:
Adult female:
Juvenile:
- Wings and back patterned more or less like adult
- Head brownish and streaked, with weak postocular stripe and
moustachial stripe
- Reddish wash on forehead
- Pale chest barred heavily with brown
- Yellowish belly sparsely barred and streaked with brown
- Juvenile plumage retained until first spring
Similar species:
White patch on wing coverts sets sapsuckers apart from all
other woodpeckers. Male Yellow-bellied Sapsukers are distinguished
from male Red-naped 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.