Birder’s Lounge

Home base for me is in Texas, but I’ve just completed a two-day road trip to Colorado. My route took me north to Kansas, then west to Denver. I brought my camera gear, but hardly expected to encounter a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) nesting at a rest stop!

One woman came up behind me and asked me what was in the tree. I said excitedly, ”A Northern Flicker!” Woman: blank stare. I said “A woodpecker!” Woman: silence. I said, just a tiny bit subdued, “A bird.” Woman: “Oh.” And she looked up to see if she could spot the bird.

This great find happened somewhere west of Wichita, Kansas. The nest was located in a cottonwood tree that was in full cotton-making mode. Northern Flickers are beautiful birds with their colors of tan, black, gray and red, plus patterns of bars, spots and black ”bib.” These flickers are the Yellow-Shafted subspecies, so named because of the color of the underside of their wing and tail feathers.

Although Northern Flickers are considered to be common, their numbers have been declining. According to Cornell’s Birds of North America Online, the Yellow-Shafted Flicker has declined in number by 52% over a 25-year period. I don’t know about you, but that scares and saddens me. The primary reasons are thought to be loss of habitat and competition with European Starlings for the habitat that remains. Flickers are cavity-nesters and require good-sized trees in suitable condition for excavation. Old and rotting trees, snags, and dead branches make great nest sites.

The decline and endangerment of any species is tragic, and too many species of flora and fauna struggle to survive in today’s world. The Northern Flicker is just one species…and efforts to help the Northern Flicker reverse its declining numbers will help other cavity nesters, not to mention help preserve the Norhthern Flicker’s place in the ecosystem.  To quote from Cornell:

Conserving the Northern Flicker is important because this is the primary predator on ants in woodland habitats and because it excavates a large percentage of the nest cavities used by numerous secondary cavity-nesting species. The loss or diminution of the Northern Flicker would likely have a large impact on most woodland ecosystems in North America.