Northern Flicker, Colaptes Auratus

Day 170: Well! This portends a crop of little baby Flickers in the future! These photos were taken just two days apart, and I'm not sure which bird has taken to drumming on the ridgepole of my house (might be either or both), a fact which both annoys and amuses me. I love my Flickers, but when the house starts rattling, I step out the door, clap my hands and speak loudly when I say, "Get offa there, you pecker!" It usually works, but occasionally the guilty party will just give me the eye and return to drilling. At that point, my voice goes from "loud" to "shout," and my clapping becomes insistent. And, as you might have expected, the bird flies off, only to return before I can close the door behind me.

So...how do you tell a male Northern Flicker from a female? The male sports a moustache! I've zoomed in on the faces here to show Mr. Flicker's red "mo," a marking absent in the female. The local residents are the Red-Shafted race, although I've seen some intergrades with Yellow-Shafted here as well. In the Yellow-Shafted race, the male's moustache is black and he wears a red patch at the back of his head.