Williamson's sapsucker sighted in Santa Rosa

Chris Smith, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The spotting of a white-rumped beauty drew spectators Thursday to the pool patio at Santa Rosa’s Flamingo Hotel.
She’s a Williamson’s sapsucker, a woodpecker that keeps for the most part to the conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada and other mountains of western North America. A visiting wildlife biologist noticed her Thursday in a tall pine alongside the east Santa Rosa resort hotel’s pool.
Emails and social-media dispatches declared that this was only the second known spotting of a Williamson’s sapsucker in Sonoma County. The bird seemed to be looking for food well up the pine.
Members of the species drill tiny holes in bark, then returns to eat the sap that oozes out and also any insects that are stuck in it. Observers noted that, from the presence of a good many holes, it appears she has sojourned in the hotel tree for some time.
Read more via Admirers flock to Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa | The Press Democrat.