Archive for: flicker

Sexual antics in our garden!

We are getting lots of birds returning to our garden that we haven’t seen since last year. We saw the grosbeak this morning for the first time and the towhee is about but we have only seen him once. The flicker pair are in the garden every day and I must add, carrying out rather indecent sexual acts on the lawn!

This is the female – she is here most often and can be seen hammering her head into the ground looking for insects.

This is the male – he has the eighties mustache!

The gold finches are now in full summer plumage of bright yellow and look beautiful when they flit across the garden from feeder to feeder. We seem to have many more of them than last year although we have changed the seed we put in the feeders which they seem to really enjoy.

We also have the killdeer running around the front garden and lots of robins. Sadly one robin was blown into our living room window the other day by strong winds and she died, so there is one lonely male around somewhere. Other birds of note are the siskins, blackbirds, grackles and the lovely little chickadees.

And of course we have the squirrels who keep everything in order. This is Boris surveying his kingdom.

As you can see their coats are looking tatty as they loose their thick winter coat for a more sleek and shiny summer one. We have also noticed activity in the nest box in which the squirrel nested and raised four young last year – so fingers crossed that will happen again.

The weather is all over the place at the moment. The other day we got to 27C but have been sitting at the mid teens this week with lots of rain.

We have a baby flicker

One of our favorite birds in the garden is the flicker. We get a couple each year who we see every so often. Last year they had one youngster and this year they appear to have done the same. we spotted this young bird in the garden. He is obviously a young bird because of his disheveled look and the patchiness of his feathers.

Flickers are from the woodpecker family but are ground birds. They hammer away at the ground rather than in trees which can make them look pretty funny. They do however have beautiful markings and are quite stunning birds.

Here he is digging for something in the ground with his rather lethal looking beak.

BTW: Only a couple of weeks before my step daughter and her friend arrive for a visit from the UK.