In our yard this has been a good time of year to spot yellow-bellied sapsuckers, those entertainingly named woodpeckers that make pecking wood a fine art.
Sapsuckers spend the summer in Canada and the winter in the southern United States.
Around now most are moving through the area on their way to warmth. Our sightings, however, have always been in late fall, and yesterday while looking at the apple tree in the back yard, we saw one making its rounds. That cliche is actually doubly appropriate. The sapsucker makes little round holes in bark, and makes them in rows that run around the trunk. Thus, if you see lines of holes encircling a fruit tree, a birch, or a maple, you know that a yellow-bellied sapsucker has been there.