Last week during the warmer temperatures I kept hearing this repeated drum from a woodpecker. It sounded like he had found something plastic to help him broadcast his frequent and very loud tapping.
One day two birds chased each other through our backyard, and that’s when I realized the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers have arrived! They’ll stick around for a few weeks, and then they will travel just a bit further north to central and northwest Wisconsin for breeding season.
Here’s a a fun fact about sapsuckers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website: “The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker frequently uses human-produced materials to help in its territorial drumming. Street signs and metal chimney flashing amplify the irregular tapping of a territorial sapsucker. The sapsucker seems to suffer no ill effects of whacking its bill on metal, and a bird will return to a favorite sign day after day to pound out its Morse code-like message.”