Participant Photo: Northern Flicker taking to to strike a pose from grub digging
It’s often hard to get them with their heads out of the ground once they get on a mission in your yard for anything living & crawling underneath it all 😉
Categories: Woodpeckers & Sapsuckers
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2 comments on “Participant Photo: Northern Flicker taking to to strike a pose from grub digging”
I have a Northern Flicker in my yarx. I first looked like it was digging a hole and eating the bugs out of it. After she sat on the hole and has been there for over an hour. It’s a cold 35 degrees in Coastal, NC and raining. What is it doing?
Hi Sharon, Flickers forage for ants and other insects by probing and hammering in soil with their bills. If a hawk or other raptor is perched nearby, birds will often freeze in place and remain still for abnormally long periods of time, so this is likely why your flicker stayed still for so long. Northern Flickers live year-round as far north as the southern bits of Canada, so although the weather seems chilly in NC, the flickers can tolerate much more frigid temperatures.