For several days now, I've been seeing two flickers at my feeder, a parent
and a fledgling (whom I have affectionately dubbed the "flicklet"). I of
course, don't know whether it has been the same parent/fledgling pair or a
sequence of different fledglings, but I find myself wondering two things:



1. Since the fledgling has clearly learned to fly (which one would
think is more complicated than learning to feed oneself), how long will it
continue to follow the parent around for food (I have wondered this ever
since I watched a noisy starling fledgling walking around after a clearly
harried parent who kept desperately finding and feeding it whatever it
could-I wondered how many human parents could relate to this scenario in
some way)

2. I'm assuming that the flicklet is watching the parent and learning
how to find food sources. The presence of my bird feeder in a time of
abundant natural food is no doubt a convenient shortcut for a parent bird,
and gives me the pleasure of watching the growth of the next flicker
generation, but I'm wondering whether there's any evidence that fledglings
who are fed this way take longer to learn to find natural food sources.



Barbara Miller

Bellevue, WA

Bmill07ATcomcastDOTnet