My friend Ann Nolte and I were walking on her property recently and after seeing lots of woodpeckers at the swamp, flying back and forth to dying trees pecking for insects, we then encountered on a dry site, several yellow-bellied sap suckers. This is the only woodpecker that doesn’t actively drill in tree trunks looking for insects to eat
Rather they drill and create flattened oval-like holes in bark that fill with either xylem fluid in winter or the highly nutritious phloem fluid when the trees are actively photosynthesizing. Xylem goes up – think zip up, phloem goes down, and of course is produced when deciduous trees are in leaf, sending that carbohydrate rich substance to all parts of the tree. Sap suckers use both substances for their own food, and phloem fluid to feed babies.
