Hello everyone! Going to let Brad have a small break from covering for me while I’m on the mend. Difficult enough bringing you the recent rapid fire posts, but having to deal with all the standard stuff around the headquarters is a daunting task without the added burden of keeping our unruly legal department under control – may have to up his bonus this year, but don’t tell him that. As far as an update on the surgery front, there has been a small hiccup with the transition from the surgical dressing to the surgical boot that has brought some unexpected discomfort (oddly more painful than the surgery itself). Other than that, surgeon says everything looks good. He also reiterated the “no weight for 5 more weeks” edict within earshot of Linda which threw a giant wrench in my well contrived plans – back to the drawing board. Seems like everything I want/need now is just out of reach from my crutches and scooter which is starting to annoy me – oh, except for my running shoes that are beyond just “out of reach” to the point I have no idea where the hell they are now. Linda’s devious I tell you, devious. Let’s see, pull up browser, type in H-O-K-A.com and get me some new sho…oh crap, here she comes…backspace, backspace, backspace, H-A-U-N-T.com, “Who, what, me!?! No, no, I’m, just looking for new haunted trail props” – this is going to be a long 5 weeks. Note, I did make a new haunt-to video which I’ll mention at the end in case you are interested.
While searching through the photo queue, I noticed something in one of the image sets that made me laugh in reference to my current situation. Perfect, welcome to tonight’s featured feathered friend.
Hit the jump to see a Northern Flicker characteristic I have never seen before!
I’ll get to that feature in a little bit. First let’s cover some more easily seen aspects of the Flicker. For those not familiar with this member of the Picidae family, more commonly referred to around here as the Pecker family. There are 23 members of this group that includes the standard 16 Woodpeckers (technically 17, but we have sadly given up on the Ivory-Billed). For the curious, I have photographed all but four of those – the Lewis’s, American Three-Toed, Nuttall’s and the Black-Backed species continue to elude me. There are 4 Suckers of Sap of which I have seen all thanks to the latest trip out to Arizona (oops, may have let out a secret) and rounding out the family are two Flickers.
The Gilded Flicker was checked off my life list a couple of years ago thanks to a late day find at Catalina State Park outside Tucson, AZ (link here). Fortunately when it comes to today’s featured Flicker, they are readily accessible across all of North America and their not so subtle name makes that readily apparent. What you may not be aware of is there are two categories (subspecies) of North American Northern Flickers, the Red-Shafted and the Yellow-Shafted.
Those distinctions represent the regional color differences this species has on the shafts of their flight feathers and on their tail. ABA got this one right – Red-Shafted do indeed have red shafts and show red coloring from underneath in flight where Yellow-Shafted display a radiant purple that compliments the blue skies beyond. Although there is some hybridization and co-mingling in places, for the most part the red ones hang out west and the purple ones hang out east. Okay, okay, the “yellow” ones, just keeping you on your toes.
Fortunately, there are some additional characteristic to differentiate the two subspecies, even if you do not get a good look at their flight feathers.
Male Yellow-Shafted: Brown face with a red nape and a black whisker (extension of the bill) (link here).
Female Yellow-Shafted: Brown face with a red nape and no whisker
Male Red-Shafted: Gray face with a red whisker to match the red feather shafts
Female Red-Shafted: Gray face, no nape and no whisker
Using the cheatsheet above, you have already figured out that today’s specimen is of the male Red-Shafted variety…and by the associative rule, you also know that this series was not taken locally here in the Midwest.
This male was actually seen on our trip to Arizona back in January 2023. Apologies, I should make that “males” as there are actually two of them here, one from Desert National Wildlife Refuge in Vegas and the other one at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park just outside of Vegas in Blue Diamond. Gnarly branches Desert NWR, smooth branches Spring Mountain. Admitted, these shots have been sitting in the queue for a while trying to determine some interesting angle of a very common bird in North America. Maybe it was the injury or just the extra scrutiny in review, but the shot above caught my attention. Probably noticed it in the digital darkroom, but missed again until now.
I think this may be the first time I have ever seen, not to mention “capture” a Flicker flicking its tongue out at me!
For some bizarre reason, I thought to myself “Everything seems to be just that much out of reach these days, if only I had a …” yeah, don’t ask, too much time stuck on a bed or couch. Regardless of my mental state, it was still something new and thought I would share.
Although classified as Woodpeckers, Flickers actually spend most of their time digging in the dirt and underbrush for ants and bugs. Their tongues are actually barbed and allow them to reach in and snatch them up.
To close out the wildlife portion of this post, these two subspecies of NA Northern Flickers along with the Gilded were each considered their own species until 1982 when the American Ornithologists’ Union forced a collective grown from the bird listers of the world and combined them into a single species.
Okay, so I haven’t just been watching YouTube videos and mindless TV shows on my hiatus, I’ve been watching YouTube videos, mindless TV shows AND editing my latest How-To Haunt video. I was busy filming various pieces of the process before the surgery knowing that this would keep me busy. What I didn’t know at the time was how hard it was going to be to edit all the various pieces together – many out of order and many redos because of camera failures etc. The good news is it is finally done. A lot longer than I wanted even though I tried to cut everything I could out of it, yet still leave enough so the viewers could recreate the process. Anyway, if you are interested to learn more behind the scenes at the Intrigued Haunt Department, here is our process for making large scale pumpkins.
Take care everyone and thank you again for all your well wishes!
Life Intrigued 