Backyard and Beyond

Northern Flickers are often seen on the ground, foraging for ants and other arthropods.These two were doing a more typical woodpeckery thing on the arboreal verticals. Note, especially in the first image, the tail feathers pressed down against the bark. Woodpeckers have stiffer tail feathers than perching birds.These are both females, by the way. No mustache mark marking a male.A lot of these yellow-shafted birds pass through the area during migration. Certain days in the spring and fall it seems like their whooshing off the ground for a tree, white rump making them easy to identify, in masses. A few will nest here in Brooklyn.