This is Bird Note.

When you hear this drilling and cat-like squeal, look for a delicate woodpecker, a sap-sucker.

Depending on where you live, you're most likely to see one of three species.

The yellow-bellied lives in the east, red-naped in the

Rockies, and red-breasted on the Pacific Coast. Each of them quietly drills small holes in the

bark of favored trees, then returns again and again to eat the sap that flows out. Although a

sap-sucker sucks the tree's blood, so to speak,

the drilling usually doesn't damage an otherwise healthy tree.

The sap sucker also takes the small insects

attracted to the seeping sap.

And hummingbirds, kinglets, and warblers

also come to the sap wells to feed. In this way, sap suckers benefit other birds.

You can spot sap sucker trees by the horizontal rows of holes

of holes scattered up and down the trunk.

These trees freeze in winter, so most sap suckers are highly migratory.

When spring comes, sap suckers are highly migratory.

When spring comes, sap suckers become noisier,

drumming like other woodpeckers, but in syncopated rhythms.

They seek out dead trees in mature forests in which to excavate their nest holes,

and sipping sap gives way to foraging for insects.

For Brutnote, I'm Mary McCann.