First record of Yellow-bellied x Red-naped Sapsucker, Alna, Lincoln Co.

[Louis Bevier]

Jeff Cherry gets the “attention to detail” award for his discovery of Maine’s first record of a hybrid Yellow-bellied x Red-naped Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius x nuchalis). The bird is an adult male in Alna, Lincoln Co. (16-17 November 2025).
https://ebird.org/checklist/S284836916
https://ebird.org/checklist/S284971662

I asked Jocelyn Hudon, curator in ornithology at the Royal Alberta Museum, about the bird, and he replied, in part: “this bird would feel right at home in the hybrid zone in western Alberta.” Jocelyn is co-author on a long-term project to study the contact zone between Yellow-bellied and Red-naped Sapsuckers (see Notala et al. 2021).

Red-naped Sapsuckers are medium-distance migrants, whereas Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are moderately long-distance migrants. So it is possible for long-distance movements to be a behavior passed on to a potential hybrid. There are several records of this hybrid pair for Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont.

Distinguishing Jeff’s bird as a hybrid is tentative, but supported by several features. Whether it is a first generation hybrid (so-called F1 generation) or a backcross cannot be determined. First, we would need to know how those are supposed to look, but that remains unknown. The hybrid zone along the foothills of western Alberta combines both early and advanced generation hybrids based on genetic analysis. It seems justified to simply label this bird as a hybrid in the broad sense.

It is highly unusual to have an adult male sapsucker this late in the season here in Maine, and that alone is of interest. The Alna bird shows these characters of Red-naped (nuchalis):

- a small patch of red-tipped feathers on the nape
- a break in black frame around throat at posterior corner
- a few red feathers in the lower rear auriculars

While it is reported that Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (varius) may rarely show red in the nape (see Earl Godfrey’s comments in Howell 1952, copied below), that red patch on an adult male combined with the narrowing of the black malar to the point of being broken and invaded with red are nuchalis traits. The back pattern on nuchalis should be two distinct columns of broader whitish bars (Devillers 1970), and the bird in question here is more toward varius in pattern but possibly intermediate. Here are the traits that this bird shows that are typical of Yellow-bellied (varius):

- white supercilium is wide (narrow on nuchalis)
- black post-ocular stripe broad (narrower on nuchalis)
- yellowish tinged bars in messy but slightly divided columns down the back
- limited red throat meeting in clean line at breast shield (red invades black shield on nuchalis)

The Maine Bird Records Committee keeps not only the official checklist of bird species recorded in Maine, but it also has a list of documented hybrid pairs. You can see the impressive list of known hybrids that have occurred in Maine here (scroll to bottom):
https://sites.google.com/site/mainebirdrecordscommittee/official-list-of-maine-birds

For me, having grown up birding in California, the occurrence of hybrid sapsuckers was always a challenge. Leaving Williamson’s Sapsucker aside and looking at the Yellow-bellied complex, there are 3 species across 4 taxa that are possible in California (Red-breasted Sapsucker includes two subspecies). Hybrids and backcrossed individuals could occur and pose an identification challenge: Red-breasted (nominate ruber) x Yellow-bellied, Red-breasted (daggetti) x Red-naped, and Yellow-bellied x Red-naped. An early introduction for me to this complex was an important paper by Pierre Devillers in 1970. That was early in our understanding of the contact zones, one of which Jocelyn Hudon and colleagues have documented now over fifty years later (Natola et al. 2021). The other contact zones have been studied over these decades as well.

Thank you, Jeff, for sharing this bird.

Louis Bevier
Fairfield


Literature cited

Devillers, P. 1970. Identification and distribution in California of the Sphyrapicus varius group of sapsuckers. Western Birds 1(2):47–76.
https://archive.westernfieldornithologists.org/archive/V01/1(2)-p0047-p0076.pdf

Howell. T. R. 1952. Natural history and differentiation in the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Condor 54(5):237–282.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/condor/vol54/iss5/1
see page 258 for the following quote:
“Mr. W. Earl Godfrey informs me (in litt.) that in the National Museum of Canada there is only one example of nuchalis from Alberta, and that there are “specimens of varius from localities east of the Rockies which show more or less red coloration on the nape. Such males are from Edmonton and Wood Buffalo Park, Alberta; Flotten Lake, Saskatchewan; Lake Winnepegosis, Manitoba; Kapuskasing, Ontario; and Megantic County, Quebec. The last, incidentally, has the nape more extensively red than any of the other specimens of varius listed above. These birds, as would be expected, show not the slightest tendency toward nuchalis in any other character.”

Natola, L., A. Curtis, J. Hudon, and T. M. Burg. 2021. Introgression between Sphyrapicus nuchalis and S. varius sapsuckers in a hybrid zone in west-central Alberta. Journal of Avian Biology 52(8):1–12.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jav.02717
see page 10 quote:
“Despite meticulous classification, our phenotypic and genotypic classifications were not always concordant. Nineteen AB sapsuckers had genotypic (Q values) and phenotypic classifications that did not accord, with eight phenotypic hybrids classified as genotypic parental types, and 11 phenotypic parental birds were genetically admixed (Fig. 3a, 4).”