Aha! I found the name of the woodpecker who has been leaving patterns of little holes on Gabriola’s alder trees – the bird I’ve been thinking of as the tattoo woodpecker. It’s the red-breasted sapsucker. From Birds of Coastal British Columbia:

Sapsuckers have adopted a variation on the woodpecker theme. They drill tidy, parallel lines of ‘wells’ in the bark of trees. The wells fill with sap, which attracts insects, giving the sapsucker the choice between sweet sap or tasty bugs. Sapsuckers don’t actually suck sap — they lap it up with a fringed tongue tip that resembles a paintbrush.

Hummingbirds often associate with sapsuckers and sip sap at their wells too. This source of nutrition is so important that hummingbirds will defend feeding territories around active sapsucker wells.

Who knew? (Everybody but me, apparently.) A discussion thread at birding.bc.ca has a fantastic photo of this bird.

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