Friday, May 17, 2013
A yellow bellied sapsucker finds a loud place to peck!
Morning Observation:
This morning in Huntington at 7:15AM it’s currently 45 degrees under overcast skies. Winds are calm. Relative humidity is 95%, dewpoint 44, barometric pressure 30.02″ and rising rapidly. We picked up 0.02″ of rain overnight. Yesterday’s high was 74 and the overnight low was 44.
Forecast:
This morning’s cloudy skies should give way to partly sunny skies later in the day as high pressure builds into the region for the weekend. Highs today will be in the mid 60s with northwest winds 10 to 15 mph. Tonight should be mostly clear and chilly with lows in the upper 30s and north winds around 10 mph until midnight becoming light and variable.
Saturday should be mostly sunny with highs around 70 and light and variable winds becoming northerly around 10 mph in the afternoon. Saturday night should be partly cloudy with lows in the lower 40s and east winds around 10 mph.
Sunday’s looking partly sunny with highs in the lower 70s and south winds 10 to 15 mph gusting up to 25 mph. Sunday night should be mostly cloudy with lows around 50.
Almanac:
Last year on this date we had a high of 63 and a low of 39. We picked up 0.66″ of rain.
Burlington norms for this date are highs of 68°F and lows of 46°F
Record high was 90°F in 1977.
Record low was 29°F in 1957.
Sky Notes:
Sunrise: 5:22 AM EDT
Sunset: 8:14 PM EDT
Length Of Visible Light: 16h 00m
Length of Day: 14h 52m
Tomorrow will be 2m 6s longer.
The Moon is a waxing crescent, 7d 10h old with 43% illumination.
Moonrise: 11:58 AM EDT
Moonset: 1:00 AM EDT
About Today’s Photo:
This Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker has found a nice loud place to tap away at in the gable end of our garden shed, alternating between the wooden siding and the metal roofing. The males do this to attract a mate apparently and they do make a racket! Another distinctive behavior of this species is the drilling of rows of holes in various trees (apple, birch, pines, etc.) They do this not to get at something under the bark, but to attract insects that then get trapped by the sap. The birds then return for a treat! This shot was taken with my 55-300mm zoom at 300mm, ISO 1250, f/6.3, 1/500 sec shutter.
East Street Weather Blog 
Great shot……….
May 17, 2013 at 11:40 am
Thanks Mona. He stuck around for a while…
May 17, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Interesting about the sap sucker drilling holes for attracting insects! To set a trap like that requires pretty complex forward thinking on the bird’s part.
May 17, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Good point Alan–hadn’t really thought of it that way…
May 17, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Great shot John. Yellow-bellies are certainly busy birds, akin to all of their woodpecker cousins; I love watching them, although I seldom have the chance. I would like to suggest (gently, re Allen, above) that sapsuckers – quite a misnomer – actually don’t think about what they are doing – this is a specific instinctual trait peculiar to them, which they could no more NOT do than do, over and over. That it works for them ensures the survival of the species. Would that we humans were so simply motivated!
May 17, 2013 at 3:12 pm