Sapsucker

 
Male Red-naped Sapsucker, 2010

For a week I have been visited by sapsuckers. 

Early one morning a week ago, I first heard and then spotted two sapsuckers on a utility pole, but managed a picture of only one of them before they both flew off. That bird, posted to recent birds and reproduced below, is a male now identified as a Red-naped Sapsucker.  

Since that time, I have heard a sapsucker a half-dozen times but only managed a few more pictures, always of a female Red-naped (one of which is below).

The odd thing about this is that sapsuckers drill holes in trees and then sip the sap that flows. Certainly, that is how I have seen them before, as in the shot of a male working his way around a mountain ash (on the right). This time the sapsuckers seemed to confine themselves to the utility pole, something that clearly lacks sap. They were probably drumming on it to communicate, rather than feed.

This is the first sapsucker (male) seen a week ago.
Its partner went unrecorded at the time.

This is one of a few pictures of the female captured over the subsequent week as it hammered on the pole. Although it was primarily in the shade, there was a moment when shifting leaves allowed sunlight on its red crown.