Yes, there seem to be lots in residential areas in Seattle. In our immediate vicinity in Maple Leaf there are lots of trees, and the courting flickers put up all kinds of racket in April.

To continue about my poor flicker pair ousted by starlings, the two continue to stand one at a time for hours at the nest hole when there's a starling inside. Occasionally a flicker and a starling will come bursting out of the hole and grapple together end over end almost to the ground. But I know it's the starlings who get most of the time in the hole and the flickers who spend their time staring into the hole, absently pecking around the edges.

The pair mate regularly in our tree. Surely she needs to lay her eggs soon, but instead of preparing a place, she's busy fighting with starlings and mooning over her lost nest. If she managed to lay some in there, there's no chance for them. I don't even know when the flickers find time to eat, they spend so much time worrying over their stolen hole. It's like their natural routine has been interrupted and they don't know how to problem solve their way out of it.

It'll be getting dark, and there will be a forlorn flicker silhouette, staring into the starling hole. So this is how starlings keep other birds from reproducing. So sad.

Alyssa
alyssasampson at attbi.com
Maple Leaf
Seattle


----- Original Message -----
From: JLScott53 at aol.com
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 12:57 PM
Subject: Flickers in City, Winged Migration at SIFF


I'm afraid I'll sound like a country bumpkin for asking this, but are flickers common city birds? I haven't lived in city for several years, and when I did live there, I didn't pay much attention to birds. Where I've seen flickers, it's always been fairly rural, and they've always seemed very shy, so a friend and I were surprised to meet a brave, small one yesterday, on a sidewalk of a residential neighborhood on Capitol Hill.

By the way, this flicker meeting occurred as we were walking to our next film in the Seattle International Film Festival, where, incidentally, the bird movie Winged Migration will be screening in June. (Details: http://www.seattlefilm.com/siff/films/film_detail.asp?filmid=254) The Film Festival is using Winged Migration to replace two screenings of a film that was canceled, so you may not have seen it mentioned in early SIFF guides. (Winged Migration opens at the Egyptian in Seattle June 20, and will play on Bainbridge Island and elsewhere too.)

Jennifer Scott
Bainbridge Island