The Tippling Woodpecker

Image: Pazzani/New Jersey Birds

This new Inkling series brings you amusing chapters from the history of science.

Yes, the tendency to attribute human characteristics to non-humans is an irresistible trait of our species. Yes, there is increasing evidence that many animals do in fact behave in ways that mirror our own emotional and social landscapes. And yes, it’s true that to a certain extent the scientific community has begun to reevaluate anthropomorphism as a potentially useful approach to zoological studies.

But this description of a yellow-bellied sapsucker, published in 1911 as part of the Handbook of Nature-study for Teachers and Parents (and written by Anna Botsford Comstock), a lecturer at Cornell, still shocks and delights my modern eye for its unabashed depiction of the bird as a “tippler” who “swigs” sap like a happy drunkard.

The sapsucker is a woodpecker that has strayed from the paths of virtue; he has fallen into temptation by the wayside, and instead of drilling a hole for the sake of the grub at the end of it, he drills for drink. He is a tippler, and sap is his beverage; and he is also fond of the soft, inner bark. He often drills his holes in regular rows and thus girdles a limb or a tree, and for this is pronounced a rascal by men who have themselves ruthlessly cut from our land millions of trees that should now be standing.

It is amusing to see a sapsucker take his tipple, unless his saloon happens to be one of our prized young trees. He uses his bill as a pick and makes the chips fly as he taps the tree; then he goes away and taps another tree. After a time he comes back and holding his beak close to the hole for a long time seems to be sucking up the sap; he then throws back his head and “swigs” it down with every sign of delirious enjoyment. The avidity with which these birds come to the bleeding wells which they have made, has in it all the fierceness of a toper crazy for drink…

Want more? Well, just so you know that the description of the sapsucker as a lush—addicted to sap just as surely as an alcoholic craves his morning drink—was not limited to a single early 20th-century writer, here is another choice paragraph fromThe Writings of John Burroughs. Burroughs was an American naturalist observing the sapsucker and composing his notes on it at about the same time as our previous writer.

In the following winter the same bird (a sapsucker) tapped a maple-tree in front of my window in fifty-six places; and, when the day was sunny and the sap oozed out he spent most of his time there. He knew the good sap-days, and was on hand promptly for his tipple; cold and cloudy days he did not appear. He knew which side of the tree to tap, too, and avoided the sunless northern exposure. When one series of well-holes failed to supply him, he would sink another, drilling through the bark with great ease and quickness. Then, when the day was warm, and the sap ran freely, he would have a regular sugar-maple debauch, sitting there by his wells hour after hour, and as fast as they became filled sipping out the sap…

I am particularly fond of the phrases “on hand promptly for his tipple” and “sugar-maple debauch,” which make me wonder if—when it comes to Burroughs himself—maybe it took one to know one?

You can read a somewhat more sober modern account of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker here.