{"id":167533,"date":"2025-03-31T06:03:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T12:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=167533"},"modified":"2025-03-31T07:13:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T13:13:27","slug":"northern-flickers-no-longer-a-near-nemesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/31\/northern-flickers-no-longer-a-near-nemesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Flickers – No Longer A Near-nemesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northern Flickers are pretty close to being a nemesis bird for me. I see them fairly often, in my neighborhood and at several of my birding haunts, but they almost never let me get close enough for decent photos. And their penchant for staying in the shade in an attempt to make it more difficult for predators to spot them doesn’t help.<\/p>\n

But last week that unfortunate tide began to turn.<\/p>\n

On three consecutive afternoons last week (at about the same time each day), while I was sitting on my patio in the shade, two male Northern Flickers landed in my Catalpa trees and then flew down and foraged for ants and other insects on my shaded lawn right in front of me.<\/p>\n

They knew I was there of course but they didn’t seem to care – which is very unusual for flickers. One of them was more tolerant of my presence than the other, coming in so close I couldn’t always fit him in frame.<\/p>\n

On the first two days I didn’t have my camera gear with me but on the third day I did. The following photos document that encounter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is the tamest (bravest?) flicker of the two, right after he’d flown down from the treetop and landed at the base of the tree, before working his way to the patch of lawn he prefers for ant foraging.<\/p>\n

I’m not fond of the fence and my neighbor’s pink lawn furniture in the background, and I wish he’d been in direct sunlight, but I was thrilled to finally get flicker shots that almost filled the frame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He dropped down to the grass and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

slowly worked his way to the same patch of shaded lawn that he’d foraged for ants on the two previous days.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here he’s looking for ants, amongst all the annoying Catalpa seed pods on my lawn that I haven’t yet had time or opportunity to clean up after the long winter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There was a patch of filtered light between the shade of the tree and the shade of my house and when he was a little better lit like this, he was obviously nervous and more alert. Here he’s watching me carefully, but he continued to come my way as he got closer to his favorite foraging patch in deep shade. And closer to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But even when he was better lit, he was also looking for ants.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here he’s looking upward for potential predators. I’m sure he’s fully aware of the neighborhood Cooper’s Hawk that would like nothing better than to catch one of the flickers out in the open. The only times I saw him watching for predators was when he was in better light like this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One more glance in the opposite direction for predators before he reached the deep shade of my house. After this he was in such poor light I took my eye off my viewfinder and watched him without taking photos. Besides, he was so close he wouldn’t fit in the frame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is the other male, high in one of my Catalpa trees. This flicker only came down to the lawn once, for a few seconds before returning to the top of the tree. He stayed up there, watching me photograph his buddy.<\/p>\n

I was so intent on photographing flickers to my left, it took me a while to notice the mayhem that was going on in my garden directly in front of me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bandito, or one of his buddies, had knocked down one of my feeders and was gorging himself on spilled bird seed.<\/p>\n

Normally the fox squirrels don’t go into my garden while I’m on my patio because they know I don’t react well to them eating me out of house and home. But apparently he knew I was distracted so he continued to chomp away, even when I aimed my big lens in his direction.<\/p>\n

Gluttonous little devil. I guess I’m going to have to look for another Slinky<\/a><\/span><\/span>. The one I used last year is so stretched out it’s completely useless.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week my luck with flickers changed. (10 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,1496],"tags":[7779,2349,7778,7777,6939,1144,6963,7780,311],"class_list":["post-167533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-northern-flickers","tag-catalpa-seed-pods","tag-colaptes-auratus","tag-flicker-feeding-on-ants","tag-flickers-avoiding-light-and-predators","tag-fox-squirrel","tag-northern-flicker","tag-slinky","tag-squirrels-raiding-bird-feeders","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/northern-flicker-7378-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HA9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167533"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167574,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167533\/revisions\/167574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}