Woodpecker in photo yellow-bellied sapsucker

I enjoyed the picture of the woodpecker in the Sunday Morning Sentinel, but it is not a downy woodpecker, as the caption stated, but rather a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

We had a male sapsucker who for many years would arrive in the spring and would wake us up, pounding on the metal TV antennae on the roof every morning at the crack of dawn, until he found a mate. We were saddened when one spring we no longer heard him, meaning that that particular sapsucker must have died.

We still have the sapsuckers nesting near our yard, but the males have not used the antennae again.

I wonder if this is what this sapsucker is trying to do with the stop sign — maybe he will stop once he finds a mate as well.

Ann Dorney

Norridgewock

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