Scrabbling, Squabbling, Squawking Sapsuckers

There's a pair of yellow-bellied sapsuckers in the woods behind my father's house. Yesterday and today there have been at least two males which I think are juveniles haunting a tulip poplar, with brief excursions to an oak. Yesterday, one (I think the same one all day) kept returning to the poplar, and while he was on it he would stay for a good fifteen minutes at a time. His routine was startling to me: beginning at the bottom he made his way up along the trunk to about halfway up, where the branches start spreading out in earnest. Once there, he would fling himself backwards off the tree and plummet down the length of the trunk, grabbing hold again just above the ground, whence he would again make his way up the tree.

Today, another little one - both of them fat or fluffed against the mid-twenties temperature - began working the poplar. But this one would get up a little bit higher and then begin to jerkily make his way down again, backwards. At one point the first bird got onto the tree, and they nearly bumped into each other. The one coming up squawked and flew at the other, driving it away.

Here's the little guy from yesterday:








Below are pics from today.