Flickers Are Back

Well the date is April 23, the second day straight of temperatures above 15 degrees (after a week of everything below 10) and all of a sudden there are birds everywhere. The air is full of Ring-billed Gulls calling, Song Sparrow and Western Meadowlark songs fill the air, and American Robins flit and hop around everywhere. This is the second wave of Robins; the first wave (almost exclusively of males) passes through early to mid-April. The second wave is composed of mostly females but also a fair number of males that are a little behind. You can tell them apart by looking at the color of their breast; a female has a lighter breast with more white while the males have a rich rusty orange breast that uniformly covers their front. A truly beautiful sight on a beautiful day.

Male American Robin

Male American Robin

Male American Robin

Male American Robin with Northern Flicker foraging in the background.

Male American Robin

But the main attraction today was the Northern Flickers. Around this time every year they come in droves for a week or two and are seen everywhere from woodlands, to farms, to golf courses and really anywhere bugs can be found. Unlike other woodpeckers they are just as comfortable foraging on the ground as they are in a tree and can often be found wreaking havoc on ant hills (ants are one of their favorite snacks). Today I saw nine individuals (surely more to come) and they were all females. You can tell them apart by looking at their cheek; males have a black "mustache" mark on their cheek while females just have a tan cheek.

Female Northern Flicker

Female Northern Flicker

Northern Flickers actually appear quite different from east to west. Western populations have red feather shafts and under-wings and thus they are named "red-shafted" flickers. Somewhere between the West Coast and Manitoba they transition from being red-shafted to yellow-shafted (as can be seen in the pictures below). Intermediate color forms are possible and occasionally seen in where populations overlap, but in general a Northern Flicker will be one or the other. Here in Manitoba we get exclusively yellow-shafted individuals. If you see a red-shafted individual let me know as they are not common here at all.

Female Northern Flicker showing off her Yellow-shafts

Female Northern Flicker

I hope you're as excited as I am that spring is back and bringing the birds with it! Hope you enjoyed this post and have a great day!

Joel G.