northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Northern Flicker I met last autumn. She lacks the "black mustache" of the males like this fella , making it pretty easy to ID the sex of the woodpecker. Though this is our most terrestrial woodpecker, sometimes eating ants off the ground, I will say most of my pictures are of them up in trees. Bird enthusiast Lesley the Bird Nerd has both an interesting facts video , an all-about video , and another devoted to their ant-eating tendencies .  October 14, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 250352775, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

A couple weeks ago at the Plainsboro Preserve I was told that orioles were out and about. I didn't see many of them but did get a picture of one male Baltimore Oriole vocalizing (as they are wont to do) near the top of a tree. At a glance you might see an orange breast/belly with a dark head/back/wings and think you're seeing the far more common American Robin . But with a clear look you'll see that their orange is a bit brighter/lighter, that they have no white eye ring, and they have a bit of white on their wings. (Robins also outweigh Baltimore Orioles 2-1, though as I've mentioned before it's not always easy to judge the size of a bird at distance.) Similar to the Northern Flicker and the Eastern Towhee , there is some debate on where to draw the line between species. The Baltimore Oriole is clearly related to the Bullock's Oriole , and there was a time they were considered the same species, called a Northern Oriole . Genetic analysis convinced ornithologi...

A couple weeks ago I told you about a fencing duel between Northern Flickers ; over the last couple weeks it's apparent that Northern Flicker breeding season is under way. I'm seeing and hearing way more of these woodpeckers than I usually do. (They sound a little like their bigger Pileated Woodpecker cousins, which in turn sounds slightly like a maniacal laugh to me.) If you're out in the woods this week, look (and listen) for these guys. I'm hearing them a lot right now. Our Northern Flickers used to be called Yellow-shafted Flickers (denoting yellow wing/tail feathers seen best during flight) while the western US had a species called the Red-shafted Flicker (denoting reddish wing/tail feathers). Eventually ornithologists determined that the Yellow-shafted Flickers and the Red-shafted Flickers interbreed sufficiently willingly (where both species are present) that the birds evidently considered one another to be the same species. This led to ornithologists to merge...

After hearing some woodpecker drumming nearby and only getting an obstructed look at someone working on a dead tree limb, I was about to give up seeing anything more. But when I moved to the other side of the tree, I saw a pair of Northern Flickers perched near one another, and every so often they'd start bobbing their heads in unison. At the time I suspected this might be a courtship ritual between a male and a female, but I now believe this was a fencing duel between 2 males. It sounds like they do this without making physical contact, so it's mostly done to impress a nearby female rather than a physical attack to drive off a rival. No woodpeckers were harmed during this duel, except possibly to his ego. Apparently loops and figure-8s are considered impressive moves during these duels. Though there could have been 1 nearby, I didn't personally see any female swooning over the impressive dueling display. April 5, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 186782748, (c) jpviolette, some r...