and yet so far. A beautiful Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker (female) made an appearance, naturally, at the very edge of my big lens’s capacity. They live very close, but they are notoriously shy. So, 12 not very good shots, out of 200 something. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Ooh, cool. I have a fuzzy cell phone pic of a Northern Flicker and a bunch of shots of small bits of one’s back through dense branches. I see them on the ground out in the open in the yard a couple of times a year, but never when I’m ready with my camera.
:D I hear ours all the time, but rarely see them. Even when they are ground hunting, they are more like Thrashers -- heard, but not seen.
They are such beautiful birds, and just once, I’d like to get a proper shot of one.
I know what you mean. I have a long list of birds around me I’d really like to get a proper shot of, many of them somewhat common in the area.
This is like me and woodpeckers (except for the one that visits the birdfeeder in winter). She looks beautiful from the distance. Maybe ooonne daaaaay…
The flickers on the west coast are almost always orange instead of yellow (I’ve only seen a yellow one once out here). Such gorgeous birds!
Patricia @ 5:
Yeah, you guys get the red ones! I’ve never seen one of the red-shafted Flickers. If they are around here, it’s as winter visitors, but they are supposed to be year round in South Dakota. I keep hoping I’ll get closer to one of them some day.
@Caine: you should visit in the spring. All day long I have to run outside and yell at the red-shafted flickers to stop drumming on the house. They simply glare at me indignantly and wait for me to go back inside. :-)
In the Pacific Northwest the feather shafts are sort of a salmon pink. They’re called red-shafted, but I could see someone calling ’em orange too. They’re the most commonly seen woodpecker here by a lot because of the ground-feeding, but easy to miss if you’re going about your life without paying proper attention to the dinosaurs.
I never noticed them until about age 30 when I was at a park in Wallingford, saw this brown bird clinging to the edges of slender small trees, had never noticed anything like that before. So I followed it around. Every time I got within 15 feet, it flapped away to another one, red under the wings getting me even more curious.
I think I was already starting to get into birds, but that one was a tipping point for my interest. Got a tattoo of a northern flicker to commemorate it. One of these days I’ll have money again and get it colored. Now that I’m paying attention, it really is easy to get decent looks at them around here. Maybe yellow-shafted are more shy.
Kestrel @ 7:
Oh, man…that would be photographic happiness!
Great American Satan @ 9:
Oh the Salmon hybrids! I’ve heard of those, but never seen one.
I would be thrilled with 15 feet, I can’t get that close. I have done like you, though, and stalked them, trying like hell to get closer!
That’s a really nice choice of tattoo. Do you just watch, or do you photograph, too? It would be great to see other people do dinosaur posts, too. People do love birds. I don’t have enough experience with Flickers to know if the yellow-shafted are more shy, but I doubt it. There are too many things trying to kill birds in ND -- assholes with guns, lots and lots of raptors, feral cats, and coyotes. Most of the birds here are a bit on the twitchy side.
We get both red and yellow varieties here in S. Az., as well as the Gila woodpecker, that looks very similar.
Those are great shots. They are a little less shy here. :)
Caine @9 --
My dad was saying he’d seen hybrids -- he does photograph, I don’t. If what I’m calling salmon are hybrids, they are the most common type here south of Seattle. I’ve found a few of their feathers. One of them is on this pile of books here, near the upper left: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnn5z8NXps1qmnzwoo1_1280.jpg
Since that time in Wallingford I’ve gotten even closer. One time my partner and I were walking to the bus stop, concrete all around, and there was a flicker flipping moss out of a crack in the sidewalk for bugs. We got within several feet.
I’ve seen them on the tree within four feet of my bedroom window, and most of the time I see ’em low it’s because they were feeding by a tree trunk and startled when I walked by. I have to conclude they’re much less shy in my area. And maybe it’s because more predation happens where you are. We do have feral cats and coyotes, but probably less.
The tattoo is pretty stylized. I’ll get a pic of it on my blog one of these years, if I manage to get it colored. :-)
crimson @10 -- I didn’t know there were other woodpeckers that looked like flickers until I randomly saw a photo of a gila woodpecker in a book. It’s interesting that most woodpeckers are pure black white and red, but flickers and gila woodpeckers done missed the memo.
Great American Satan:
Oh, wow. The colours!
The color balance in that photo is no doubt a shade too warm. Don’t have a camera at the moment & not 100% sure where the feather got to, but trust me it’s really salmon colored. Oh, here’s one someone has that is much the same: https://thenatureniche.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dsc_0236.jpg I’m seeing that kind of image result labeled as “red-shafted” though, so is it really a hybrid?
Great American Satan @ 13:
My field guides say the Salmons are hybrids. I think the feather descriptor you linked is simply wrong. As you can see in the photos of the yellow shafted -- the wing feathers are an intense, bright yellow. The same would hold for the red, I think. I can’t even say how much I’d love to see both, jealous of you all!