Yellow Bellied Sap-Sucker

Think this is a made-up bird because of its funny-sounding name? It isn't, and one of my gardens may have lost a 25 foot yew tree because of them.

This garden is a little gem. Over an acre -- it sits between two buildings -- creating a huge inner courtyard. Because of its many specimen trees, including several 70 foot London Plane Trees, Kevin Kenney of Bartlett Tree company does a twice yearly inspection of the property.

We had been noticing severe die-back from the top of one of our prize yews and pointed this out to Kevin when he was here in May. Kevin's diagnosis: Yellow- bellied Sapsucker damage. At first I thought he was kidding, but he assured me these little birds existed and here was the proof:

Part of me was thrilled that our garden had such an exotic sounding species in residence ... but take a look at the damage....

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are small woodpeckers; they drill small holes in tree trunks, lick the sap and eat any insects they find. They migrate as far south as Panama in the summer --

Kevin's men pruned out the dead at the top of the tree and told us that the only way to protect the tree against further damage was to wrap the trunk and all the limbs in burlap. It seems burlap could not prevent the sapsucker penetration, for some unknown reason the bird avoided burlap wrapped trees. The tree has to stay wrapped until the end of August when the sapsucker begins its migration south.

Will let you know next year if this saved the Yew.