Sap Tapping Sparrow... bottoms up!

It's very cold and windy today, the birdbaths are frozen and added warm water doesn't last long in its liquid state. We have a plug in heater for one bath, but didn't get it set up before the insane cold set in. I went out in search of a bright red Cardinal to photograph and came back with images of something I had never seen before, sap tapping and sipping Sparrows. Apparently it's common with Sap Suckers, and various Woodpeckers as sited below, but it was a first for me. Squabbling, non-sharing Sparrows fighting over liquid flowing from small gashes they had inflicted in a slim Maple tree. Something learned, something to be shared, once a teacher, always a teacher I suppose.


Edward H. Forbush, in The Birds of Massachusetts, tells of how his assistant, Charles E. Bailey, watched a downy woodpecker tap a swamp maple and subsequently feed on the sap that flowed from the wounds.
"He tapped the tree by picking it a few times very lightly; it looked like a slight cut, slanting a little," reported Bailey. "The cut was so small the sap did not collect very fast. The bird would go and sit for a long time in a large tree and not move, then it would come back and take more sap. It did this three times while I was watching it. It did not care to take any food but the sap...."

Sap Squabbles