Mud season brings with it a sweet release. Sap. It’s sugar bush season, and all around, delicious amber syrup oozes over pancakes, waffles, and French toast. Fresh maple creamies cause traffic jams, and the magic of hot syrup hardening over fresh snow never disappoints. Evaporators bubble away inside sauna-hot sugar shacks as watery sap transforms into thick syrup. One hot sip skimmed off the top of the pan announces Old Man Winter is on his way out, and spring, with all its sweetness of life, is about to burst through.
Long before red-winged blackbirds and wood frogs call, spring is inching forward. When
the landscape is dirty with old snow, and temperatures creep above freezing during the day
only to sink back below at night, the run begins. Dormant throughout the winter, sugar maples and other hardwood trees awake, ending their winter rest. Spun from last year’s sunshine and stored all winter, mixed with water and nutrients drawn in through the roots, sap is the tree’s lifeblood.
Humans aren’t the only sweet-toothed creatures looking for a sip of sweetness. With
beak and gnaw, many different animals, from birds and invertebrates to mammals, find their way to nature’s springtime sugary drink. Sweet sap arrives just in time. Late winter and early spring are truly the lean times for wildlife. Food is scarce, especially for migrating birds who are undertaking epic journeys northward heralding spring. High in sugar and rich in minerals and water, sap is an essential food for some of these early migratory birds.
The sap master of them all is no other than the aptly named, yellow-bellied sapsucker.
New Hampshire’s only truly migratory woodpecker flies as far south as Panama for the winter. Listen for its return in early April when males regularly drum on trees to mark territory. This migratory woodpecker species is a sap specialist. With its stout, chisel-like bill, it drills a series of small, tidy horizontal holes into the bark of high sugar-content trees, including sugar maple, red maple, yellow birch, and paper birch.
These industrious birds maintain feeding holes, called sapwells. They visit them daily to clean, re-drill, and widen the wells. Unlike most other woodpeckers, which have barbed tongues and sticky spit used to capture insect prey, the sapsucker’s tongue is bristled like a paintbrush — a perfect tool for lapping up the oozing sweet sap. These red-capped, black-and-white, sturdy woodpeckers also feed on insects stuck in their wells or glean ants and spiders from tree bark.
The sapsuckers’ sapwells are like soda fountains to another bird — the ruby-throated
hummingbird. Ruby-throated hummingbird migration follows the sapsuckers’ return. In early spring, when flowers are scarce and nectar is unavailable, the little hummingbird finds sweet reward in sapsuckers’ wells, licking up the sugary meal. So essential is this high-energy swig, the hummingbird fiercely guards the wells.
These petite birds, weighing no more than a nickel, attentively patrol sapwells chasing off interlopers through scolding vocalizations, and physical skirmishes where they use their long needle-like beaks and tiny claws to fight off other sap seekers, such as other hummingbirds, chickadees, and titmice.
Early spring isn’t only tough for birds – -it’s no picnic for mammals, either.
Stored caches are depleted, and for those plant-eaters, like deer and porcupine, their reserves are down from a season of eating nutrient-thin inner bark. Like an energy drink, sap offers these hungry mammals a sugary meal that is easily converted into energy. Rodents, especially squirrels, tap maple trees with a deep V-shaped bite into the tree’s xylem where sap flows. They then reap their sweet reward by licking up both the watery sap and the sugary residue created after the sap dries.
According to Steve Roberge, UNH Cooperative Extension’s State Forestry Specialist and
long-time sugarmaker, “Many mammals make a meal of spring sap, like porcupines, coyotes and foxes, who chew on young sugar maples, and black bears have been known to bite the thick plastic tubing in a sugarbush, leaving tubes pierced and broken from their sharp teeth.”
One of Steve’s favorite things to find in his own sap buckets heralds the end of the season.
With warmer weather, native pollinators become active. Moths, native bees, beetles, and ants are drawn to the sweet sugar. As the freeze-thaw cycle gives way to consistently warmer night temperatures, the composition of sap changes from sugary to bitter. When the pollinators show up, it is time to put away the buckets until next year.
Next time maple syrup graces your plate, take a moment to thank not only the maple
tree and the sugar maker, but raise a sticky toast to the other wild ones who depend on this
stuff. It is all the sweetness of life, right there in one sticky lick.
Susie Spikol is the community programs director and naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock.