We saw a Northern Flicker in the yard exhibiting some weird behavior. It was eating ants, it hung out for over an hour. However, sometimes it would lay its wings flat across an ant hill or something that it had found in the yard. Here’s some photos.
In the picture to the left, you can see the flicker spreading its wings.
You can see the red patch on the head in the picture to the right.
Here he is digging into the ant hill.
Above you can see a little better image of the Northern flicker. It is eating at ant hills.
We also saw this rabbit in the same area, it eventually scared off the flicker.
The Northern Flicker was in the yard for over a half hour. It was very neat to watch. It was really focused on getting the ant hills. I was glad to be able to watch it for so long. We’ve usually only seen them fleetingly. It seemed like it had yellow underneath the feathers, but I really wasn’t sure if it was the Yellow Shafted or Red shafted variety.
