{"id":31171,"date":"2015-05-07T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=31171"},"modified":"2015-05-07T12:06:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T18:06:40","slug":"northern-flicker-excavating-the-nest-cavity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/07\/northern-flicker-excavating-the-nest-cavity\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Flicker Excavating The Nest Cavity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northern Flickers tend to use existing nest cavities (rather than excavating new ones) more often than other woodpecker species and this bird followed that pattern. Last summer this cavity in Clark County, Idaho\u00a0was used by a pair of Williamson’s Sapsuckers to raise their chicks. Flickers are 2.5 times larger (by weight) than the sapsuckers so the hole and cavity were too small for the flickers and it had to be “remodeled” for the\u00a0them to gain access and use it for nesting. By the time I arrived on site a few days ago\u00a0it was obvious that\u00a0the entrance hole had already been enlarged and the male (males do most of the nest excavation) was working at enlarging the interior.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here the male (red or black malar stripe is\u00a0lacking in female) has just moved straight up the trunk to the nest hole so his wings are still moving and they’re blurry at this shutter speed. This much\u00a0wing softness\u00a0won’t appeal to many but the body, head and legs are sharp\u00a0and I thought the wing motion-blur worked well enough to indicate the movement of the bird up the tree. Besides, I always enjoy seeing the reds on the wings that you typically can’t see when they’re folded.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then he entered the cavity. The entrance is barely large enough to accommodate\u00a0the relatively plump bodies of the adults – in some of my photos it almost looks like he’s going to get stuck in the hole as he tries to exit the cavity.<\/p>\n

Each time he entered the cavity I could hear him pounding away as he enlarged the interior. Then after a period of excavation when I couldn’t see him…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0he would appear at the entrance with a beak-full of wood chips. The light angle was such that I was seldom able to get light in the eye for the split second I could see him before he…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

shook his head vigorously and sent the wood chips flying. Against this dark background the chips show up pretty dramatically.<\/p>\n

This bird never flew off to discard the chips away from the nest tree\u00a0like the sapsuckers often did last year. The difference may be that by the time I photographed the behavior in the sapsuckers the nest was already full of excrement-producing chicks so the chips were soaked in wastes. I’m guessing that the reason the\u00a0sapsuckers usually hauled them away from the nest had to do with nest safety and potential predators.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed the chip-discarding behavior many times but as he violently shook his head it was very difficult to get light on the face. This is one of the few times I succeeded.<\/p>\n

As I’ve said in previous posts there’s still a lot of competition among various species for several of the nest cavities and incomplete holes in this aspen but due to their larger size and aggressive behavior I suspect that it will be flicker chicks coming out of this\u00a0cavity in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

I wish them a successful nesting season.<\/p>\n

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

Northern Flickers tend to use existing nest cavities (rather than excavating new ones) more often than other woodpecker species and this bird followed that pattern.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31179,"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":[334,391,1496],"tags":[2053,2349,2486,2032,2487,211,2485,230,1144,276,2038,2110],"class_list":["post-31171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-northern-flickers","tag-clark-county","tag-colaptes-auratus","tag-excavation","tag-idaho","tag-malar-stripe","tag-male","tag-nest-cavity","tag-nesting","tag-northern-flicker","tag-sexual-dimorphism","tag-williamsons-sapsucker","tag-wood-chips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/northern-flicker-7685-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-86L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31171","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=31171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}