A warmer morning, and all the birds are calling: Carolina wren, robin, crows, a flicker. Squirrels chase back and forth across the snow.
flicker
Tuesday April 09, 2019
Sunny and warm. A red-bellied woodpecker chases a flicker out of the woods. The first spring azure butterfly blows past like a leaf.
Sunday April 22, 2018
Cloudless and still. A pair of flickers inspect the old flicker den in the dead elm where a rat snake once swallowed all the hatchlings.
Monday November 07, 2016
Clear and dead still. A flicker lands on the elm snag and pokes into the old den hole. Her wings, when she flies, glow yellow in the sun.
Thursday October 08, 2015
A sharp-shinned hawk keeps chasing flickers in the yard; they yell at the effrontery and circle right back each time. A wren chatters alarm.
Sunday August 16, 2015
Ground fog in the corner of the meadow glowing faintly pink in the sunrise. A flicker flies out of the old den in the dead elm tree.
Wednesday June 10, 2015
Have the flickers fledged? Their den hole gapes, silent. Is absence of evidence evidence of absence? A pileated woodpecker’s wild laughter.
Thursday June 04, 2015
Just audible over the tractor: a tanager’s hoarse song. The male flicker flies out of its nest hole carrying an offspring’s white fecal sac.
Sunday May 10, 2015
A half-hour after sunrise, the flickers arrive at the elm from different directions, copulate twice, and go back to work on the nest hole.
Saturday May 09, 2015
The hole in the dead elm is emitting puffs of dust: a flicker cleans house. Just beyond: scarlet tanager! Then the cardinal’s humdrum red.
Friday April 25, 2014
Two male flickers fighting over the dead elm and its den-hole joust in the garden, jabbing and feinting with their long bills.
Friday April 18, 2014
The flickers that have been hanging around the yard copulate next to the old den hole in the elm snag—the one a black snake raided in 2012.
Saturday March 02, 2013
A squirrel climbs the elm with a mouthful of dried leaves, goes into the old flicker hole and turns to face out, ready for other contenders.
Wednesday September 12, 2012
A squirrel creeps up to the flicker hole in the dead elm, but another squirrel pops out chittering and gives chase through the treetops.