Northern Flicker

Meet the black sheep of the woodpecker family: the Northern Flicker. They’re decked out in spots and bands instead of the typical black-and-white plumage, and they prefer to eat ants and beetles off of the ground instead of drilling for insects in rotting wood. However, like other woodpeckers they excavate their nests in trees and drum on hollow objects to defend their territory from other birds. Wild Flickers will drum on hollow trees, but urban ones take advantage of human metal, including ventilation pipes on houses and abandoned vehicles.

Because of their gaudy outfits, flickers are easy to identify. In flight, their wings show bright red and their bums are bright white, and when sitting their black and brown markings are unmistakeable. This one I saw November 11 at Sunset Beach Park. He was very interested in this hole in the tree, maybe feeding on insects inside of it. (He’s male because of his red moustache—the lady Flickers have plain gray faces.)

East of the Rockies, Northern Flickers have yellow wings instead of red. The two colour morphs used to be considered separate species before orithologists “lumped” them into one in the 1970s. The ‘70s was an era of lumping for birds (Audubon and Myrtle Warblers both became Yellow-Rumped Warblers, and six Junco species all became the Dark-eyed Junco) but scientists have recently turned the tables and done more species splitting than lumping. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day we were again calling this bird the Red-Shafted Flicker. While we fret over the definition of a species and which birds belong to which group, the birds continue to go about their daily lives unaware of our struggle with systematics.

A flicker drumming on our ventilation pipe several years ago in Delta. The sound echoed through the whole  house and was especially loud in the bathroom.