The flicker is both a common and conspicuous species here, but it remains a bird of mystery. Only one species draws brings more telephone calls and emails, and that is the bald eagle. The eagle brings ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Even if you wouldn’t know what it was if it landed on your shoulder, you’ve probably heard the northern flicker’s distinctive drumming in spring. It sounds ...

The northern flicker is an unusual woodpecker that delights us while it spends the winter in much of South Texas, from San Antonio to Houston. One might assume the bird, which is among the largest of ...

One fine April morning in 1919, an 11-year-old boy named Roger Tory Peterson was exploring a natural area in Jamestown, New York. He happened along what appeared to be a clump of dead feathers stuck ...

Wow! Doug and Lisa, You came all the way from Iowa just to go birding on Cape Cod? I have family members who wouldn’t even know that the Cape had birds if I didn’t talk about them so much. And, as ...

For the yellow-shafted northern flicker, “you are what you eat” has proven freakishly true. These eastern North American woodpeckers get their name from a thin vein of yellow that runs through the ...

Three of them flew off as my car slowed down. I saw their little white butt patches shining in the new morning sun. One of the Northern Flickers, however, was deeply absorbed in digging for insects in ...

Some of you are not seeing as many feeder birds lately, but one large bird that is on the local radar right now is the northern flicker. You’ll often see this big brown member of the woodpecker family ...