For several weeks this fall we have caught glimpses of an interloper among the flocks of robins forming up to move further south for the winter. As birding neophytes, we did not recognize this shy and skittish bird - catching sight only of a flash of white over its tail as it flew away. Like amateur detectives we pieced together the evidence - about robin-sized, ground feeding, white rump patch. And then, in a hastily captured, blurry photo of a departing bird we saw the flicker of yellow flame beneath its wings. Of course, a northern flicker - named for that flickering of color as it flies away - yellow for the northern flicker in the north and east and red for the western variety. Or maybe they are named flicker because it sounds like one of their songs, a repeated wicka-wicka-wicka. I prefer the flickering flame version.
Flickers are woodpeckers, the only woodpeckers that frequently feed on the ground like their American robin companions. Flickers have over 100 common names, more folk names than any other North American bird, some of which are attempts to mimic their distinctive song. It is the state bird of Alabama where flickers are known as yellow-hammers as were the Confederate soldiers from Alabama during the Civil War. They love ants, which make up 45% of their diet. And I’m told that flickers possess the longest tongue among North American birds (can that be true? what about herons?) - a full two inches of barbed and sticky mayhem when poked into an ant colony searching for the especially delicious and nutritious larvae deep inside. Like many other birds, flickers engage in anting. You know, anting, not to be confused with the ranting of some other birds and humans. Without destroying this tiny morsel of food, flickers carefully extract formic acid from a gland on the ant’s abdomen and use it to preen their feathers and maybe to kill otherwise harmful parasites. Flickers mate for life and are among the only migratory woodpeckers - moving south from the northern tiers of their range in the fall and tending to return to the same nesting territory the following spring.
Northern yellow-shafted flicker drinking from our koi pond. Moments later the pond’s homicidal bull frog tried unsuccessfully to grab him.
These lovely birds may be just passing through our area from further north to further south. But maybe the warming climate means that central New Hampshire is already “further south,” and we’ll have them all winter - or maybe they will return to breed here in the spring.