Many times over the years I have watched and gotten photos of Northern Flickers in our yard doing primarily Passive Anting behavior. Yesterday morning I observed a male Junco doing almost exclusively Active Anting which was a first for me to see and both interesting and entertaining. He was in an area of the yard where I know there are many tiny-ant nests in the ground. Unfortunately I did not have access to my camera, but did have binocs so got good looks at it.

The first few times I saw the Junco standing on its tail, which happened very quickly but frequently, I thought it was just one heckuva clumsy bird...then admiration set in for its coordination. For those who haven't seen it, since there is no way to properly describe all the moves, so below is a link to an NPR site with a video showing a bird doing just about exactly what the Junco was doing...in particular, the standing on its tail so could place ants on its underside was a surprise to me. The bird in the video is up against a wall crawling with ants, which are also on the bird in some numbers, yet it still is also grabbing and placing ants upon itself.

The Junco was constantly in motion, repeating the same movements again and again-;picking at the ground (picking up ant?) then gyrating and twisting to put it either on underside of rump/tail while standing on it or under its wings. It did very little of the dustbathing-like hovering posture of passive anting. It moved up and down along around a 3-4 foot line where there are many ant nests.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/04/162296009/animals-who-love-to-rub-themselves-with-ants-is-this-addictive

Dee Warnock
Edmonds
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