Hi Alyssa,

I am in Maple Leaf too. I joined Tweeters a while ago but this is my first
post.

About the flickers. I'm not sure if this would work but maybe you could put a
flicker box in your backyard. My dad and I built one last year and
unfortunately the squirrels took it over. But, we got another one for this year and put
it up around April 1. The flickers found it the first day we put it up and are
always in it. I'm sure they should have babies by now but I haven't heard
anything. Maybe they weren't successful in raising young this year but they sure
hang out in the nest box a lot.
We have a ton of mature evergreens in our backyard and the starlings hang out
in the tops of the trees but never come down to the level where we have the
boxes up. I'm not sure what your yard is like but maybe it would work to put a
box up for the flickers and see what happens.

Simone Cook
Seattle, WA

P.S. My mom saw a pair of Western Tanagers a few days ago and yelled at me to
"come look at the escaped lovebirds!" Maybe they were the same Western
Tanagers you saw in your yard?