Maybe there's some heart rot or something that makes it easier. Usually on things like a big aspen tree where the wood is kinda soft. In the case of these flickers, it's usually the males. Another one is to excavate a nest cavity. And that's the same thing you would do as a flicker, try to pry open the ground to get at the grubs. Why is he pounding on that? You are pounding on the tree as a woodpecker (if it's a rotten one) to pry it open to get at the grubs. As a kid I used to watch the Woody Woodpecker cartoons and I though he was eating the wood or something like that. That's a lot of trouble, you know?ĬS: Right. MF: So they'll whack into a tree not to eat, but to nest. A lot of times they actually excavate the cavities themselves, instead of taking it over from someone else like a lot of other birds do. MF: If they eat on the ground, and they're unusual as woodpeckers for that, do they even get into the trees at all? Do they nest on the ground?ĬS: It's just the foraging that's on the ground. Woodpeckers are pecking at rotting trees to get at insects and the ground has insects in it, too. MF: So really open ground, not even with vegetation.ĬS: That makes sense, too. Their main food is ants, and also beetle grubs, but mostly ants. You'd see the big white patch at the base of the tail and my mom would always say, 'There goes the flicker!' It was like a greeting as we went down the road.ĬS: It makes sense, because if you're in that open area it's easy to see the ground. It was a sandy road and they would always be flying up from the road. MF: We would see them always when we had to drive on a dirt road into our camp. If you don't see it pecking on a tree, how does it get to be called a woodpecker?ĬS: Maybe you'd see the flickers, too as a kid, near where you'd see the robins because they like it along the edges of roads and fields. MF: Exactly, you think of a woodpecker being on the tree. It wasn't until years later I found out they are actually a woodpecker.Ĭurt Stager: Yeah, you don't think of a woodpecker pecking the ground instead of wood.

And the second were flickers because they are big, easy to see, very distinctive looking, and they are often on the ground a lot. Martha Foley: I think flickers are maybe the second bird I could identify as a little kid. Martha Foley and Curt Stager explore its habits. This distinctly-marked member of the woodpecker family, instead of browsing wood for their food like their relatives, digs for food in the ground. The Northern Flicker is one of the most recognizable birds.

Northern flicker bird