Instead of enjoying a little nip of a Chardonnay still on the vine, this red-shafted northern flicker encountered wrath among the grapes when it was attacked by a couple of dogs in March at a Gilroy vineyard. A neighbor walking his own dogs witnessed the incident and called WERC for a rescue. After a careful search through the rows of trellised vines, the bird was located hiding deep inside a ground squirrel hole. Fortunately, the dogs didn’t seriously injure the flicker, but gave it a brusque shaking. Because there was an old wound on its neck, it’s possible the bird had been previously injured, which might explain how the dogs were able to catch it.
Flickers play a vital role in the control of pests such as caterpillars, termites, beetles, grasshoppers, moths, snails and aphids —but especially ants, which account for nearly 90 percent of its diet. Researchers have found more than 3,000 ants in the stomach of a single bird. Unlike other woodpeckers, flickers forage mostly from the ground and dig to get at ants.
In addition to insects, the flicker eats berries, seeds and suet from backyard feeders. The flicker’s long tongue is an amazing tool. Besides being sticky enough to pluck up ants, it has a barbed tip that can harpoon a grub and pull it out of a hole in a log. The beak is long and pointed, tapping into soft and rotten wood to find bugs and build a nest out of an old tree cavity.
Red-shafted northern flickers can be seen year-round in the western United States, inhabiting open forests, towns, parks, and urban woodlands. The similar yellow-shafted northern flicker, with yellow wings and tail, inhabits the eastern and northwestern United States. Male red-shafted flickers have red sideburns and male yellow-shafted flickers have a red crescent on their nape, but this particular bird is an anomaly: It’s a red-shafted flicker with a red nape. To find out more, I contacted the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which replied that, “the northern flicker seems to have a somewhat plastic genetic make-up—and this can be especially apparent where the red-shafted and yellow-shafted forms overlap. Very interesting how these different characters present in the broad ‘overlap zone’ within the ranges of the races.” Though the hybrids are common at the edges of these two groups’ ranges, it is still an unusual occurrence because central California is not a typical overlap area.
After one week in the flight enclosure where he gorged on wholesome meals of mealworms and waxworms, this flicker had regained his health. Happily, by that time the spring storms had cleared and he was released on a sunny day near his “home” vineyard.
The next time you’re outside gardening, picnicking or hiking and you hear a “wake-up wake-up wake-up,” a “flicka flicka flicka” call or a rapid hammering sound, keep your eyes open for the flash of bright salmon-orange of the flicker’s tail and wings and its unique polka-dotted breast and distinctive black “bib.”
Are you interested in attracting these birds to your backyard? According to the Audubon website, plant native fruiting shrubs such as gooseberry, sumac, Virginia creeper, dogwood and elderberry. Hang up wire or log suet feeders and paint tree trunks with sugar water or other sweet fluid (molasses, syrup, etc.) to attract ants. Finally, if safety permits, keep snags from dead or dying trees as potential nest sites on wooded property and don’t use lawn pesticides that may kill the insects eaten by flickers and harm the birds.
The Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center rehabilitates native wildlife. It is supported solely by donations from businesses and the public. To contact WERC, call (408) 779-9372 or visit www.werc-ca.org.
