Nature’s Bounty: How woodpeckers created the wood’s most popular dining spot

A reminder that aging trees feed the forest in all sorts of ways

Most encounters with birds are fleeting: A Bluebird alights nearby for a blink of an eye. A hummingbird zips past in a blur. A Red-shouldered Hawk circles once or twice before vanishing.

But that wasn’t how it went when we pulled into a campsite last month in Upstate New York, right beside an old, half-dead American Elm leaning out from the woods.

As we set up camp, we noticed first one, then two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers chipping away at a patch of bark midway up the trunk. A pair of Downy Woodpeckers soon joined the party.

Over the next two weeks, the woodpeckers — along with nuthatches, warblers, catbirds and even a couple of hummingbirds — took turns feasting on the steady supply of sap and insects. From dawn until dark, the birds were forever inching up and down the tree.

This was nature’s intricate economy at work. As this elm was gradually dying, the tree was giving life — feeding this flock of birds, foremost among them the woodpeckers. The sapsuckers weren’t serving just their own needs. They were helping create a full buffet for a wide cast of characters.  

Nature’s engineers at work

Too often, we see dead or dying trees as eyesores to cut down. Yet when left standing, they turn into homes for insects and fungi, meccas for birds, and a vital link of the interconnected web of life. For me, this elm became a window into that world, enabling hours watching and photographing the scene.

Here’s a video that lets you see why these birds can’t get enough of this battered elm.

The stars of this story are the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers and their remarkable craft. Look closely at their handiwork and you’ll see neat rows of holes, as if drilled by a machinist. These are sap wells, part of the farm the birds tend, sometimes season after season. Researchers study the bird’s routines in detail, marveling at the precision and persistence of the handiwork that give them their name.

During our visit, the sapsuckers did indeed behave like tiny farmers. They’d rotate from one part of the tree to another, pecking steadily to keep their taps open. They’d pluck off insects drawn to the sap, then go back to patrolling their territory. When nuthatches arrived, they’d skitter up and down the branches, feasting on the insects. Hummingbirds hovered over the wells, sipping the sweet flow — all guests at the woodpeckers’ banquet.

A family business

We came to suspect this might be a family farm. Two years earlier, camping on the same site, we’d been captivated by another group of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, including a mother and three fledglings that kept visiting this same tree.

Sapsuckers, one of the woodpecker species that migrates, tend to come back to the same spots every season. We suspect we were seeing one of those earlier sapsuckers returning with its own brood to take custody of this familiar tree.

There is a flip side to all the drilling. Years of pecking can be tough on trees, sometimes helping kill them off. Indeed, every part of this elm was riddled with holes. One evening, just after hosting a cookout, we heard a loud crack as a limb gave way, flattening our tarp and scattering our campsite with chunks of wood.

We wondered whether this would slow down the sapsuckers. The next morning, though, they were back at work on other parts of the tree, shimming up and down its remaining branches, as if nothing had happened. After all, there’s a community to feed.