I was happy to find this Red-breasted Sapsucker this morning, back at his old tree here in the Dallas Retirement Village. 2021 has been a tough year for him as well as everyone else. The landscape crew got carried away this year in trimming up this tree and exposed his hideaway where he could harvest the sap in secrecy. You see, Sapsuckers drill holes in trees not to find insects, but to access sap. They then return to these "sap wells" again and again to harvest the sap. If a hapless insect gets stuck in the sap, so much the better for the Sapsucker. In the past I could count on stopping by and peering deep into the foliage to see him, or getting a glimpse of him as he came and went to and from his hidden source of sap. But for many months now, he has been missing. I'm sure he has felt his private world was destroyed. So, it really made my day to find that he was back. Perhaps he summoned up the courage to drill new holes for sap out in plane sight. I'm going to choose this as a good omen for the New Year, with hoping we all can manage to get back to our normal lives again.
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