Species Spotlight August 2017

Northern Flicker
Colaptes auratus

The Northern Flicker is a large woodpecker with characteristic bright and striking colors, ranging from bright white on the chest, to sharp red underneath its wings, to a triangular black patch on its upper chest. Its ringing calls and short bursts of “jack hammering” can be heard in spring just about anywhere in North America.

You’ll find the Northern Flicker in more open fields with scattered trees, including woodlands, suburbs, yards and parks. In the West, it can be found in mountain forests all the way up to the tree line. Having a vast range, from Alaska all the way down to Nicaragua, the Flicker can be found in almost any habitat that contains trees. This is an unusual woodpecker, because it mainly forages on the ground. It does, however, fly like most woodpeckers, rising and falling smoothly with interspersed periods of flapping and gliding.

The Northern Flicker feasts mainly on insects, especially ants and beetles found at ground level, but will also eat fruits and seeds, especially in winter months. It will even target ants located underground (where the nutritious larvae are found), hammering into the earth the way other woodpeckers drill into wood. It’s large tongue can stick out two inches past the length of its bill to trap and “lick up” its prey.

Both the male and female will help to excavate the nest. The “front door” is about three inches in diameter, and the cavity can be up to sixteen inches deep, and wide at the bottom to allow room for eggs and the incubating adult. The cavity will usually include only a layer of wood chips for the eggs and chicks.

The pair will ordinarily excavate a nest hole in a dead or diseased tree trunk or a large branch. Unlike many woodpeckers, the Northern Flicker will often reuse a previously-excavated cavity. The nest will commonly be placed six to fifteen feet off the ground, but can rarely on rare occasions can be over 100 feet high!

The male will aggressively defend its nesting territory with calling, drumming, swinging his head back and forth, flicking his wings open and spreading its tail to show off its bright underside. The courtship ritual is also similar.

Early in spring and summer, rival Flickers may face off in a ritualistic display sometimes called a “fencing duel,” while a prospective mate watches. The two birds face each other on a branch, their bills pointing upward, bobbing their heads in time while drawing a loop or figure-eight pattern in the air, often with simultaneous rhythmic calls.

The one brood per year will usually yield five to eight eggs, but sometimes as many as 12, white in color. Incubation is handled by both male and female, lasting between 11-16 days. Both male and female also feed their young, by regurgitation. The young Flicker will leave its nest about four weeks after hatching.

Cool Facts

• Although it can climb up the trunks of trees and hammer on wood like other woodpeckers, the Northern Flicker prefers to forage for food on the ground. They particularly like ants, and the Flicker will dig into the dirt to find them, using its long barbed tongue to mop up the ants.
• The red and yellow-shafted types of the Northern Flicker (yellow in the East, red in the West) used to be considered different species, and the two forms hybridize extensively in a wide area from Alaska to the Texas panhandle. A hybrid will have some traits from each of the two birds.
• The Northern Flicker is one of the few woodpeckers in North America that is strongly migratory. Flickers in the northern parts of their range head south for the winter, although a few will stay farther north.
• Like most woodpeckers, the Northern Flickers drums or hammers on objects as a means of communication and also for territory defense. The “object of the game” for the Flicker is to be as loud as possible, which is why it’ll sometimes drum on metal objects. There are reports of hearing a Northern Flicker in Wyoming that could be heard drumming on an abandoned tractor from a half-mile away.
• The oldest known Northern Flicker (yellow) was a male and was over nine years old when he was found in Florida, and the oldest red Flicker lived to be at nearly nine years old.