Pecking away

Yesterday I wrote about a cavity a family had flickers had carved out in a tree next to my house. The picture above is a different tree and a different flicker, but the same general idea.

We were in Boulder visiting our son David a few years ago. We were walking through a nature preserve on the outskirts of town when we came upon this bird, very diligently cutting this tree trunk down to size. Flickers nest in tree cavities; both the male and female work at creating their home space, and both help incubate the eggs of their chicks. Very progressive.

You’ll find flickers throughout the US. You’ll see a flash of color in their wings when the fly off. In the East, that flash is yellow; in the West, it’s red. The yellow flash is why the bird is sometimes known as a “yellowhammer.” It’s the state bird of Alabama, which is why one of its nicknames is the Yellowhammer State.

Flickers are part of the woodpecker family, but they feed mostly on the ground. Ants are its main food, and the flicker digs in the dirt to find them. It uses its long barbed tongue to lap up the ants.

Flickers are gorgeous. I remember reading a story about famed naturalist and artist Roger Tory Peterson, in which he said his love for birds sprang from seeing a flicker as a child. I get that!