He flies and wears a red cap

By Aaron Horrell

You can remember this little native bird by relating it to Santa Claus.

It wears a red cap, flies and visits Southeast Missouri every winter.

This small woodpecker is called the yellow-bellied sapsucker. It is a migratory bird that summers and raises its young in Canada and parts of the northeastern United States. It winters in the southeast United States and much of Central America.

My photo shows the sapsucker with its beak in a sapwell it previously pecked out on a willow trunk.

I scared the bird away from the tree as I walked past, but I noticed the rings of holes and anticipated the bird would return soon.

I sat down quietly about 15 steps from the tree and pointed my camera at the sapwells. Within 15 minutes, I got this definitive shot.

The call of the yellow-bellied sapsucker sounds like a single squeeze of a child's squeaky toy. The little bird will call while it is sitting on the side of a tree. Intervals between calls are often three to five minutes.