Fun with Flickers

[David Suddjian]

This is not a report of unusual birds, but I've had three recent observations of interesting Norther Flicker behavior that I thought would be fun to share.

In my yard a few days ago a flicker was attracted to suet hanging in a cage from the end of a branch. Apparently deciding he didn't want to, or couldn't, land on the cage itself, he perched directly over it, more than a body length away. He hung down and pointed his body and neck straight down and extended his tongue to the suet. The tongue darted in and out to a length that appeared to be over two lengths of the bill as he licked the suet. I'm not sure how much he got from the licking, but he stuck at it for several minutes. Other times flickers simply land on the cage and get bill fulls of suet; I'm not sure why this one did other wise. But it was fun to see that long pink tongue darting out so far!

About a week ago two flickers spent most of two hours foraging under the eaves of two moderately large buildings on the grounds of St.Mary Catholic Church in Littleton. They were after some morsels where vertical outside walls met roof overhangs. I've seen flickers work such niches before, but never in such a dedicated fashion over such a long period.

Lastly, yesterday a young female Cooper's Hawk perched in a tree near my home and was mobbed by three flickers that came to gather round its perch, taking a variety of aggressive postures, with much bobbing and bill pointing, some wing flashes, and a bunch of raucous calls. They never came less than 2 feet from the hawk, which seemed annoyed but unmoved.

David Suddjian

Littleton, CO

[Norm Lewis]

Inspired by David's post highlighting the interesting things one can see and learn by watching common birds, I thought I'd pass along a tidbit from my resident house wrens- considerably after the fact, of course. I have three wren houses in my yard, and usually have at least two families of wrens and quite a bit of double-brooding. I also have two flicker boxes that A) give the flickers a place to nest, and B) more importantly, keeps them from excavating giant chunks out of the side of my house.

Sometime in the late fall I undertake the job of cleaning out the wren houses to prepare them for occupancy in the spring. Those who have cleaned out wren nests know that they are a masterpiece of effort, if not artistic accomplishment. Those little rascals make an unbelievable number of trips to get hundreds of twigs into the nest cavity, often struggling for several minutes to fit a long stick in a small hole. Anyway, after clearing the wren houses, I recalled that one of the wrens had co-opted a flicker box for its second round of nesting. The flicker box is high enough that I need a ladder to get to it, so I had procrastinated a bit. I finally got up there, wondering what I would find when I opened the box. When I opened the box, I gasped with amazement! Well, not really, but it was pretty interesting: the wren had filled that entire box with twigs, and it is a big box. There were so many packed in there that it took me five minutes to pry them all out. If I had a little more time on my hands, it would have been interesting to count them. It would probably have taken only a year or so. There had to be thousands. And every one of them represents a round trip by a tiny bird.

Birds never fail to amaze, do they not?

Norm Lewis

Lakewood, CO

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[Peter Burke]

Just this morning my yard flicker brought to my attention that the suet feeder was empty. I noticed the bird as it got up underneath my gas grill where it no doubt found some disgusting, sooty remnants of past dinners!

Peter Burke

Editor, Colorado Birds

Colorado Field Ornithologists

935 11th St. Boulder, CO 80302

(973) 214-0140

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[maca...@aol.com]

Several years ago when my CO Spgs Area 11 CBC crew first spotted the female Acorn Woodpecker along Cheyenne Blvd in mid-Dec., it and a N. Flicker were both clinging to and working along the fascia on front of the roof overhang of a house, picking at or lapping up some unknown grubs or eggs (or dripping water from snow on the roof shingles??), from under the slight shingle extension beyond the fascia boards. As subsequent sightings mostly occurred on or en route to/from a neighboring house's suet cages, I figured the roof-edge attraction must have been dripping water, but I've always wondered... Has anyone ever looked closely at that type of surface; are there sometimes sufficient numbers of eggs or hatched grubs there that could make it a repeatable food attraction for woodpeckers? 

Marty Wolf,

NW CO Spgs

-----Original Message-----
From: David Suddjian <dsud...@gmail.com>
To: Colorado Birds <cob...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Dec 6, 2015 3:33 pm
Subject: [cobirds] Fun with Flickers

[DAVID A LEATHERMAN]

Intended to send this to all of COBIRDS.

DAL

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From: daleat...@msn.com
To: maca...@aol.com
Subject: RE: [cobirds] Fun with Flickers
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 16:35:41 -0700

Marty et al,
Two insects known to live under eaves are: European Paper Wasp (Polistes dominulus and native paper wasp relatives in the genus Polistes make paper combs containing 10-20 cells each) and I have seen a lot of praying mantis egg cases under eaves and on the upper part of brick walls shaded by the eaves.  The Black-and-Yellow Mud Dauber (Sceliphron caementarium) often sticks its mud cells provisioned with spiders in such microsites.   Probably other possibilities like spiders, spider egg sacs, dead insects trapped in spider webbing, harvestmen (aka daddy-longlegs), swallowtail butterfly chrysalises, etc.  One thing they are NOT after are boxelder bugs, which often congregate on house walls (and come inside if they can gain entry).  As far as I can tell, NO bird will touch them, apparently due to toxic or otherwise nasty sequestered compounds.  Regarding the most likely insects, at CBC times of the year, woodpeckers and other birds could be going after unhatched larvae, cadavers, or, in the case of the mud dauber, provisioned live but stunned prey contained in the mud cells.  And you might very well be right about dripping water.

Dave Leatherman 
Fort Collins

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Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 14:26:31 -0500
From: cob...@googlegroups.com
To: dsud...@gmail.com; cob...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cobirds] Fun with Flickers

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