Dear Tweeters,

I forgot to mention some interesting Flicker behaviour that I observed today, 2-08-14, at my house near Cockreham Island (Skagit County).

?
I showed the birds to?my wife, who?looked it up on the Internet, and found a
reference to a paper, "Early Reproductive Behavior of Flickers," from 1959,
by Lawrence Kilham. What we saw exactly matched his description of
behaviour of two male YSFL. The ones Kilham?saw?were observed in the month of?February,
near palmettos (thus in Florida, I presume). My birds were both YSFL X RSFL intergrades. They
?spent at least ten minutes in?a pear-apple tree, pointing their bills at each other, hopping around
from branch to branch, and with at least one bird spreading its wings at the other from time to time.
Sometimes their bills opened; we heard nothing from inside the house, but I
think they vocalized.

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch