Hi all,

I witnessed a young Northern Flicker's learning process on Saturday that could easily have resulted in her demise, but all appeared to end well.

By three tall fir trees in my backyard, I have two suet feeders which have been regularly visited by a group of as many as five Northern Flickers since this summer. Several of the birds are clearly this year's young. I also placed a Flicker nest box on one of the firs about two months ago to let it "age" over the winter and hopefully attract a nesting pair next spring. The flickers took some notice of it, and one even entered briefly, but I didn't realize it would prove critical to a bird before nesting season.

Late Saturday afternoon, we experienced several torrential downpours (ah, the joys of living close to the mountains in Snoqualmie) that were also quite windblown. One of the young flickers was hanging onto a feeder long after the others had left - and the straggler was getting quite drenched. She then hopped to the tree the feeder was on, and clung to the downwind side of the tree - but she didn't have enough cover and was clearly taking on more water. Meanwhile, it was getting close to dark. I wondered if she would find suitable cover before getting hypothermic. She tried to shake the water out of her feathers, then attempted to fly to nearby woods. But she was so waterlogged that despite frantic flapping after she took off, she crash landed in a heap onto the ground - too wet and heavy to fly. At this point I figured I'd try to catch her, bring her in the house and dry her off, but before I could do anything she hopped on the ground to a second fir and climbed that !
tree in
to another inadequately sheltered position. It then became apparent she was eyeing the flicker box, which was on the third tree. She tried to fly to the nest box - only ten feet away - but probably covered no more than three horizontal feet before she crashed to the ground in a heap again. She quickly scurried up the tree the nest box was in and climbed onto the top of the box.

It was nail biting time watching her try to figure out how to get over the roof overhang and to the nest box hole since she couldn't fly there. (All you rock climbers know how hard it is to downclimb at all, let alone downclimb past an overhang!) She finally shinnied her hindquarters down over the edge of the overhang, held onto the overhang with one foot, let go and grabbed for the box. She managed to grab the corner of the box exterior and then carefully maneuvered to the hole and crawled in. Sunday morning when I took the dogs out, she was peering out of the nest box - and later in the day all five Flickers showed up again, so apparently she survived the ordeal. I suspect she will take more significant cover more quickly the next time the heavens open up. From watching this as it played out, I highly doubt she would have survived the night had the nest box (partially filled with cedar chips) not been available.

John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com