I was just outside building some raised beds to start thicket bean in, and recognized a bird flaying overhead - yellow bellied sapsucker. A kind of
wood pecker which has a sweet tooth.
These birds seem to develop a fancy for certain
trees. On my
lawn, had a very nice weeping birch, which was its favorite tree. But you could see its checkerboard damage of bark on lots of other trees: paper birch, mountain
ash, willow, spruce and so on.
I am thinking of trying to establish a "sugar bush" (sugar maple with associated trees) in a spot on my
land, and it has even more sugar in the sap than the birch does. If I just plant one or two maples, that isn't enough to make syrup at some point (Vermont vacuum method or taps). If I plant 100 or so maples, I am hoping that is too many trees and so only some may have excessive problems. The flip side is that I could now end up having many besting pairs of these destructive little tree killers on my land.
Any ideas on managing these woodpeckers? The region does have two other woodpeckers that I believe are here all year long. These sapsuckers are migratory.