{"id":39974,"date":"2016-06-08T06:01:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T12:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39974"},"modified":"2016-06-08T07:25:09","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T13:25:09","slug":"northern-flickers-with-a-little-competition-for-the-nest-cavity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/08\/northern-flickers-with-a-little-competition-for-the-nest-cavity\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Flickers With A Little Competition For The Nest Cavity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relative size apparently makes no difference when birds are competing for nesting cavities. In this case the Northern Flickers\u00a0are twelve times larger than the House Wren (130 g vs 11 g).<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed this flicker at its nest cavity two days ago in a remote area of\u00a0Clark County, Idaho. The nest tree is within just a few feet of a narrow, steep and very rough and narrow dirt\u00a0road used heavily by die-hard fishermen so the flickers have apparently become acclimated to nearby vehicles. I photographed the activity around the tree from my pickup on the road. The area\u00a0is mostly deeply shaded so I was always struggling with light and depth of\u00a0field and typically had very little shutter speed.<\/p>\n

This is the male of the pair (red malar\u00a0stripe) as he is about to enter the cavity.<\/p>\n

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\"northern1\/500, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Her the male is\u00a0checking out the neighborhood before he attends to some housekeeping. Notice that at these camera settings only\u00a0his bill and face are sharp but in this situation I think the depth of field gives us an interesting and intimate\u00a0photo.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/5, ISO 2500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Occasionally I could hear him chipping away at the inside of the cavity to make it larger. Then he would bring a beak-full of wood chips to the entrance hole and…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/5, ISO 2500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

rapidly shake his head to send them flying. This behavior was very difficult to photograph in such low light. I had to go to ISO 2500 in order to gain enough shutter speed to mostly stop the action.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Later on the same day I found the female (no red malar stripe) peering out at me. This was the only time I saw her that I know of. Notice that she has two flies for company…<\/p>\n

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\"house<\/p>\n

1\/250, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

House Wrens are notoriously gutsy but the gall of this one surprised me. Just a few minutes after the female flicker left the cavity this diminutive wren brought nesting material to the same cavity.<\/p>\n

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\"house<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The wren struggled to get the twig into the nest hole…<\/p>\n

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\"house<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

but eventually it succeeded. Both bird and twig disappeared into the cavity right after I took this image. It seems to me that the wren was taking a real chance. I can only imagine the mayhem that would likely\u00a0result if one of the flickers came by and caught the wren inside the cavity.<\/p>\n

I’ve now arrived home from my camping\/photo trip to Montana and Idaho. We had a glorious time and the weather was excellent so we stayed a little longer than planned. It’s good to be home but we’re already talking about and preparing for our next trip to the area.<\/p>\n

I appreciate the support from readers while I was away. Internet access is always problematic on these trips and this time it was worse than usual so I was mostly unable to respond to comments but many of you made them anyway. Thank you.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Relative size apparently makes no difference when birds are competing for nesting cavities. In this case the Northern Flickers are twelve times larger than the house wren (130 g vs 11 g).<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39979,"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":[6,334,391,1496],"tags":[2053,2349,94,137,1573,2032,2487,211,2047,231,1144,2981,2046],"class_list":["post-39974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-northern-flickers","tag-clark-county","tag-colaptes-auratus","tag-competition","tag-female","tag-house-wren","tag-idaho","tag-malar-stripe","tag-male","tag-nesting-cavity","tag-nesting-material","tag-northern-flicker","tag-throwing-wood-chips","tag-troglodytes-aedon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/northern-flicker-0655-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aoK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39974","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=39974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}