I’ve never posted this photo before in part because it was significantly underexposed in camera. In fact I’d never even opened the image. But when I finally opened it last night (it was taken 6 years ago) and then worked it up it was surprisingly sharp and detailed so I actually liked it.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/williamsons-sapsuckere-2006-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"williamsons-sapsuckere-2006-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis female Williamson’s Sapsucker has a beak full of ants for her chicks in the nest. Here she has landed at the cavity entrance and is waiting for her mate, who is still inside the cavity, to exit before she enters. I photographed this predictable routine many times near the border of Montana and Idaho over a period of two summers.<\/p>\n
The number of ants carried by the parents each trip varied tremendously. Sometimes I could only see a few ants outside their bills although there may have been more of them inside that I couldn’t see. Other times there were so many ants I could barely see the bill of the parent. I’ve seen smaller and larger ant loads than this one.<\/p>\n
It made me wince when I first realized that most of the ants were still alive. Anyone who’s been bitten by ants knows why. I can’t imagine what would prevent them from biting the tongue and even the face of the sapsuckers.<\/p>\n
Here it may be a little difficult to positively identify the insects as ants so…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/williamsons-sapsuckere-2006-large-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"williamsons-sapsuckere-2006-large-crop-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
I cropped tightly on the bird in the same photo in an attempt to make it a little easier. If it still isn’t obvious…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/williamsons-sapsucker-0991-large-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"williamsons-sapsucker-0991-large-crop-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
here’s another tightly cropped photo of her with a different and even larger load of ants. Conveniently one of them is hanging down against the homogenous background making it easy to see that they’re ants. Pretty big ones too. Another ant appears to be loose and running around freely on the top front of her bill.<\/p>\n
I’ll never forget being bitten by large ants like these in Montana when I was a little kid. It was always painful and the duration of the pain was far from brief. During nesting season adults and youngsters of this species eat ants almost exclusively. In fact Williamson’s Sapsuckers have the highest dependence on ants as food of any North American woodpecker.<\/p>\n
So I’m thinking that sapsuckers must have some kind of defense against “the revenge of the ants” but if they do I have no idea what it might be.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n- Note: The scientific name of Williamson’s Sapsuckers is Sphyrapicus thyroideus<\/em>. As someone who has recently endured thyroid surgery I’m curious as hell to know why thyroideus<\/em> was chosen as their species name. I tried researching it but came up empty. The Greek “thyreoeides” apparently means “shield shaped, like a door” but apparently I’m not smart enough to make the connection with this species of sapsucker. Any guesses anyone? The only thing I can think of is the similarity of the opening of their nest cavity to a door but that possibility seems more than a little remote…<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
\n- Addendum: Facebook friend Muffy S. Gately found a reference (Latin For Bird Lovers) that says “thyroideus” may refer to the black breast patch of the female sapsucker.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It gives me The Willies to think that most of these ants are still alive because I know from experience that they have a nasty bite..<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,392,391,2089],"tags":[5045,5044,5043,2039,2038],"class_list":["post-83932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-williamsons-sapsuckers","tag-defense-against-biting-ants","tag-delivering-ants-to-chicks-in-nest","tag-eating-ants","tag-sphyrapicus-thyroideus","tag-williamsons-sapsucker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/williamsons-sapsucker-0991-large-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lPK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}