Northern flicker

Name and taxonomy

The scientific name of the northern flicker is Colaptes auratus. The genus name comes from a Greek verb that means to peck or to strike. The species name is Latin for gilded, and it points to the golden shafts under the wings. The English naturalist Mark Catesby drew the bird for a book issued between 1729 and 1732. Carl Linnaeus gave it a two part name in 1758 and placed it, wrongly, among the cuckoos. Nicholas Aylward Vigors set up the genus Colaptes in 1825 with this bird as the type species.

Ten subspecies are recognised, and one of them is extinct. They fall into a yellow-shafted group in the east and north, and a red-shafted group in the west. Ornithologists once treated the two groups as separate species, then joined them because they interbreed freely. The highland birds of southern Mexico and Nicaragua are now split off as the Guatemalan flicker. Other languages give it names of their own, such as Goldspecht in German and Pic flamboyant in French.

Evolution and relatives

The flicker belongs to the woodpecker family, Picidae, in the order Piciformes. Its genus holds fourteen living woodpeckers, all of them from the Americas. Several of these relatives also feed on the ground, so the habit is probably old in the group. Like other woodpeckers, the flicker has two toes forward and two back, and stiff tail feathers that prop it against bark. Its bill is slimmer and more curved than the chisel of a bark-drilling woodpecker. That shape probably suits soil and ant nests better than hard wood.

The pileated woodpecker shares much of the flicker's range but is larger and blacker. The two sound different, and a listener can separate them by call alone. The split between the yellow-shafted and red-shafted forms appears recent, because the two still mix. Birds with orange shafts and mixed face patterns turn up where the two ranges meet.

Appearance

The back and wings are brown with close black bars. The lower breast and belly are pale buff with round black spots. A black crescent sits across the upper breast like a bib. The tail is dark above and gives way to a white rump that shows in flight. An adult is 28 to 36 cm long and weighs 86 to 167 grams. The wingspan runs from 42 to 54 cm, and the tail is 7.5 to 11.5 cm long.

Colour under the wing separates the two groups. Yellow-shafted birds have lemon shafts and linings, a grey cap and a red bar on the nape. Red-shafted birds have salmon shafts, a brown cap and a grey face, and no red nape bar. Males carry a moustache stripe at the base of the bill, black in the east and red in the west. The largest birds come from Alaska and Labrador, and the smallest from Grand Cayman.

Habitat and range

The flicker breeds from Alaska and Quebec south through the United States and into Mexico. Populations also live on Cuba and on Grand Cayman, and the range reaches the highlands of Nicaragua. It likes open country with trees nearby, such as woodland edges, burnt ground, farmland, gardens and parks. In the western mountains it climbs to the tree line. Stands of dead timber probably matter most, because a soft trunk is easy to dig.

Southern birds stay put, while northern birds move. Spring migration starts in early April, and the return flight falls between September and October. Birds that breed farthest north travel farthest, so northern and southern birds often winter together. The Rocky Mountains divide the species into an eastern and a western migration route. Prairie birds winter in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, and Pacific birds winter from California to Baja California. Ground feeding likely explains the movement, because a flicker cannot reach prey under snow.

Diet and feeding

Ants are the main food, and they can supply 45% of the diet. The bird hops over open ground and probes the soil with its bill. It hammers into buried ant nests the way other woodpeckers hammer into wood. The tongue then shoots 50 millimetres past the tip of the bill and gathers the grubs. Like other woodpeckers, it holds the insects on a sticky, barbed tongue tip.

Beetles, termites, caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets, wasps, flies, moths, spiders and snails fill out the menu. The flicker sometimes takes insects in the air, and it breaks up cattle dung to reach the flies inside. Fruit and seeds matter in autumn and winter, when more than half the food may be fruit. It eats the berries of dogwood, sumac, poison ivy, hackberry, elder and wild cherry, plus sunflower and thistle seed. The bird also eats the European corn borer, a moth that costs American farmers a great deal each year.

Behaviour and social life

The flicker is active by day and forages alone or in a pair. Flight comes in bursts of flapping followed by a glide, which gives a rolling, wave-like path. Birds sleep in cavities, and about 75% still find a hole to roost in while on migration. Flocks form on passage, though the species is not a colonial nester. Pairs return to the same nest hole in later years, which saves the work of digging a new one.

Rivals of the same sex settle disputes with display rather than combat. A bird points its bill at an opponent with the head tilted forward. It may swing the head from side to side, bob it, or fan the tail to flash the bright shafts. Both sexes practise anting, using acid from the ants they catch while preening. The acid probably helps to keep feather parasites down.

Communication and senses

The common call is a long, laughing run of notes, written as ki ki ki ki. A single note sounds like a sharp klee-yer, and courting birds give a squeaky repeated phrase. Many of the bird's folk names copy these sounds, which is why so many of them exist. Males use a call and a head-bobbing display to attract a female. The same call aimed at another male is a warning about territory.

Drumming appears to carry the same message without a voice. The bird beats a fast roll on a resonant surface to say that a patch is taken. Loudness is the point, so flickers drum on metal gutters, chimney caps and street signs. Sight guides the ground search and lets a male recognise a female. Like other woodpeckers, the flicker probably senses prey movement through the bill as it probes.

Reproduction and life cycle

Breeding runs from February to July, and the start depends on how warm the season is. A pair stays together through the season and splits up afterwards. Both birds dig the nest, and the work takes one to two weeks. They choose a dead trunk, a dead branch on a living tree, a post or a nest box. Old burrows of belted kingfishers and sand martins sometimes serve instead. The hole is about 8 cm wide and the chamber runs 33 to 41 cm down.

The chamber widens at the base and holds nothing but a layer of wood chips. Most entrances face east or south-east. A clutch holds six to eight white glossy eggs, the second largest of any North American woodpecker. Both parents incubate for 11 to 16 days, and the male usually takes the night shift. Chicks are fed by regurgitation and leave the hole 25 to 28 days after hatching. At about 17 days old they stop lying on the floor and cling to the wall instead.

Young birds beg from their parents for a while after they fledge. They moult into adult plumage between June and October. A pair may raise one or two broods in a season. Few adults grow old, and only one or two birds in every 300 pass seven years. The oldest wild flicker on record reached 12.5 years.

Predators and threats

Cooper's hawks and sharp-shinned hawks take adult flickers in eastern North America. Raccoons, squirrels and snakes climb to the nest and take eggs and chicks. Nestlings have almost no defence once a predator is inside the hole. Adults react mildly, flying short circuits around the intruder or jabbing with the bill. Like most cavity nesters, they gain more from a deep hole than from a fight.

Common starlings are the sharpest pressure on nest sites. The starling arrived from Europe and evicts flickers from holes they dug themselves. Tidy forestry may remove the dead trunks the bird needs. Flickers sometimes dig into stucco walls and soft wooden siding, which brings them into conflict with owners. Warmer springs now start migration early, which may put arrival out of step with the food supply.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the northern flicker as Least Concern. The bird is common over a huge range and turns up in gardens across the continent. GBIF holds occurrence records from 23 countries for the species. iNaturalist alone carries 166,329 observations. NatureServe ranks it as secure in Canada and in most states and provinces that assess it.

Numbers have still slipped steadily since the 1960s. Competition for cavities and the loss of standing dead wood are the likely explanations. One subspecies, the flicker of Guadalupe Island, is gone, and the last record dates from 1906. Mainland red-shafted birds were seen breeding on that island in 1996. Few targeted measures exist, because the species is not treated as threatened. Leaving dead trees standing is probably the cheapest help a landowner can give.

Relationship with humans

The flicker lives easily beside people and feeds on mown grass and garden lawns. It will use a nest box of the right size in the right place. Suet and sunflower seed may draw it to feeders in winter. The bird eats pest insects, including the European corn borer and the aphids that ants farm. Holes it abandons become homes for owls, ducks, small songbirds and squirrels.

The main complaint against it seems to be noise and damage. A male drumming on a metal chimney cap at dawn may wake a whole household. Birds also excavate nest holes in stucco and thin siding. The species is protected in the United States as a migratory bird, so removal needs care. Blocking a favoured surface or offering a nest box probably settles the problem.

In culture and myth

Alabama took the yellowhammer, a folk name for this bird, as its state bird. The nickname began in the American Civil War with a cavalry company from Huntsville. Their new uniforms carried yellow trim, and other soldiers greeted them as yellowhammers. The name spread to all Alabama troops, and the state is still called the Yellowhammer State.

Many Native nations, above all in the west, count the woodpecker as a bird of luck and friendship. California nations count them as medicine birds and set their scalps and feathers into regalia and headdresses. Northwest Coast nations carve the woodpecker as a clan crest on poles. Stories about woodpeckers appear among the Lenape, Mi'kmaq, Caddo, Odawa and Apache. Several of them are jokes in which another animal copies the woodpecker and fails.

The bird's folk names seem to be a record of how people heard it. Wake-up, walk-up, yarrup, heigh-ho, clape and gawker bird all echo the call. More than 100 such names are on record, which is unusual for any bird.