Northern Flicker

Colaptes auratus

Family:

Woodpeckers

Size:

Medium

Visits:

Throughout the Year

Behavior:

Ground Feeders

Northern Flicker Facts

With leopard-spotted bellies and tiger-striped backs and wings, northern flickers are not your everyday woodpecker. For the most part, you can find northern flickers in an unexpected place: on the ground, foraging for ants and beetles. (Though, on occasion, you’ll catch one knocking away at a tree trunk, more like Woody.)

Size:

12" Long

Markings:

Black-spotted tan bellies and brown-and-black striped backs and wings. Red crescent on the nape of the neck and a black band on the chest. Males have a distinct black cheek stripe which females lack. Most northern flickers found in the Eastern U.S. are “yellow-shafted,” with lemon-yellow undersides to their wings. (Northern flickers in the West are “red-shafted.”)

Habitat:

Open spaces at forest edges, and in parks and yards.

Behavior:

Northern flickers sing in flight and have a long, 15-second call that sounds like kweeka-kweeka-kweeka-kweeka. They forage on the ground, and their feeding habits prove beneficial to farmers and gardeners, for they’ll gladly consume European corn borers, aphids, and other pests.

Diet:

Ants and beetles, small invertebrates; berries, nuts, and seeds.

Vocals:

The Northern flicker’s song is a long, stuttering wikwikwikwikwikwik and its call is a more spaced-apart kyeer-kyeer-kyeer.