Tweeters, thanks for all the posts on those flocking flickers. Since I
wrote, I had 5 come in together to the feeders. They are definitely
attracted to the yard by the suet feeders; otherwise, they're in the
ravine behind the house, although they do also come in, often singly,
and search the ground for ants.

I wonder if the "dance" that Bob Meyer's video shows might not have
been aggressive posturing, which I see all the time when two birds show
up at a feeder at the same time. Accompanying sounds are distinctive
also. In fact, why wasn't it between the two females, rather than for
an off-screen male? I've seen a lot of birds bob at each other that
way, with spread tail; quite a display and usually at close range.

One of my more interesting flicker experiences was one day when I was
throwing peanuts out onto the lawn for the Steller's Jays. A flicker
landed in the midst of them and immediately began hammering on a
peanut, eventually demolishing the shell and pecking the nuts apart and
swallowing them. For all the times flickers and jays are in the yard
together, I've never seen a repeat of that action.

Another interesting thing that flickers sometimes do is to feed from a
cage feeder full of shelled sunflower pieces, not usually accessible to
woodpeckers. The flicker merely inserts its barbed and sticky tongue
through the mesh and pulls out the pieces and swallows them, like an
anteater getting termites from a nest.

About "intergrade" flickers: the red nape characteristic of
Yellow-shafted Flicker has spread pretty much throughout at least
northwestern populations of Red-shafted Flickers and probably shouldn't
be considered a sign of intergradation any more. At least it doesn't
mean that that flicker came from the zone of intergradation between the
two subspecies. I have seen it a number of times in breeding flickers
in Washington, far from the range of breeding Yellow-shafted.

Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382