{"id":114978,"date":"2018-05-02T10:03:49","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T14:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=114978"},"modified":"2018-08-02T14:48:05","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T18:48:05","slug":"video-its-a-bird-in-a-tree-but-what-bird-what-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/05\/02\/video-its-a-bird-in-a-tree-but-what-bird-what-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: It&#8217;s a bird in a tree. But what bird? What tree?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Way up in a tree on the Bates campus, a bird hammered away at the wood on a recent afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Mindful of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/bates-greats\/jonathan-y-stanton\/\">Bates\u2019 birding history<\/a>, I was curious: What species was this rat-a-tapping bird? The possible pecking order, I figured, included two familiar Maine species: the downy woodpecker and hairy woodpecker.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Yellow-bellied sapsucker in spruce tree at Bates\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/265419038?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Professor of Biology Don Dearborn, an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/01\/11\/climate-change-is-behind-storm-petrels-breeding-decline\/\">expert in avian biology<\/a>, cheerfully ID\u2019d the bird after I showed him a video clip and still image.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s neither of those woodpeckers, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a yellow-bellied sapsucker,\u201d he explained, pointing to the black and white mottling on its back \u201crather than a block of solid white, as with the downy or hairy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And, he added, its red throat makes it a male. \u201cMale and female sapsuckers both have a red forehead \u2014 though not visible in your photo \u2014 but only the males have a red throat.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_114980\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/sapsucker-red-2151.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-114980\" class=\"wp-image-114980 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/sapsucker-red-2151-400x267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/sapsucker-red-2151-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/sapsucker-red-2151-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/sapsucker-red-2151-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/sapsucker-red-2151.jpg 1620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-114980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">You can tell the species and gender of this bird by the red patch on its throat.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The species&#8217; eponymous yellow belly can be \u201cquite variable,\u201d he said. \u201cThis one appears to have at least a tiny bit, low on its flanks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sapsucker\u2019s chosen tree, located in a small stand of mixed conifers at the corner of Nichols Street and Campus Avenue across from the Historic Quad, is clearly a spruce.<\/p>\n<p>I asked Brett Huggett, assistant professor of biology\u00a0and architect of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/canopy\/\">Bates Canopy website<\/a>, which species. \u201cAre its branches hanging down?\u201d he asked me. (Yup.) \u201cThen it\u2019s a Norway spruce.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sapsucker is a migratory bird, so it can seem a bit more rare in Maine than the year-round downy or hairy woodpeckers. As its name suggests, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.audubon.org\/field-guide\/bird\/yellow-bellied-sapsucker\">sapsucker drills holes in a tree<\/a> and feeds on the sap that oozes out.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_114979\" style=\"width: 910px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/norway-spruce-red-pine-0203.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-114979\" class=\"wp-image-114979 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/norway-spruce-red-pine-0203-900x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/norway-spruce-red-pine-0203-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/norway-spruce-red-pine-0203-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/norway-spruce-red-pine-0203-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/04\/norway-spruce-red-pine-0203.jpg 1620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-114979\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The yellow-bellied sapsucker was doing his thing in a Norway spruce (center), a species characterized by drooping branches. On left and right are red pines. This stand of conifers is at the corner of Nichols Street and Campus Avenue.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bird in a campus tree is worth two Bates professors when it comes to explaining what all the racket is about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":114980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,217],"tags":[10530,2995,10834],"class_list":["post-114978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-science-technology","tag-brett-huggett","tag-donald-dearborn","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114978"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115360,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114978\/revisions\/115360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}