Red-naped sapsucker Sphyrapicus nuchalis

Identification Tips:

• 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:

• Red throat

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.