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pair of starlings. The flickers have no choice but to find another tree suitable for carpentry and start all over again.
In some areas, flicker populations have declined precipitously because they were unable to reproduce their species. This handsome bird needs help. I can only add that the starling is not protected by either state or federal law.
If the flicker is successful in laying eggs and incubating them for two weeks, the resulting young are fed partially digested fruit and insects (including ants) that the adults vigorously pump into their open mouths.
The hungry brood, deep in the nest cavity, makes a curious noise that sounds much like a hive of angry — or potentially angry — bees. This hum is telling the adults they are hungry. This ominous buzz is most effective in deterring a predator such as a raccoon, or even a snake, intent on a meal of young flickers. What kind of critter wants to take on a hive of bees?
The common flicker, as he is now officially designated, can be lured to bird feeders for suet, stale combread, a mixture of rendered fat and commeal, and even fruit.
Flickers, like other woodpeckers, use a sort of Morse code to communicate, instead of an elaborate and intricate song. Rhythmic tapping and pounding on tree limbs and trunks is their way of luring mates or advertising territory.
Besides the “wicka-wicka-wicka” call — which Thoreau interpreted as “Wake up, wake up!” — flickers also announce their presence with a loud, abrupt, and penetrating “keer.”
My naturalist wife, Lee, and I once taught in the same private school in Virginia. One of my students — an eighth grader and bird bander — appeared with a dead flicker to show Lee’s second grade class. The bird had flown into a window and broken its neck.
I instigated the visit, since Lee’s class was studying birds. The young students could see a flicker close up.
A second grade girl gazed long and hard at the handsomely marked bird. She stroked the buff-colored breast covered with black spots and admired the yellow wing linings. Finally she asked, “Who painted it?”
That seems to me a logical question. Could natural selection produce so much color, so perfectly arranged?
The answer is, of course, “yes.” It all goes to illustrate the miracle of adaptive evolution.
Write Virginia naturalist John Trott at: PO. Box 59, Washington, Va., 22747.
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