Towheeblog

Work on the Clark Creek flicker nest continues. I witnessed a shift change around 11:15AM. When I first looked at the nest hole, no action. Then the male flew in and hung beneath it. Soon the female flew out. Then three crows created a loud distraction and the flickers pretended to be invisible (more on crows later). After the crows settled their dispute, and flapped off, the male entered the cavity and wnt to work.

Here you see wood chips waft away from the releasing beak:

Here’s the female hangin’–first in morning, then in afternoon, nothing’s changed:

Enter:

You gotta admit these flickers really get into this nest thing.

After the crow incident, there was a lot of looking up. First a single crow flew onto the back side of mdead cottonwood snag where the flickers are working. Both flickers perched outside and watched. The crow was sorting through dense clumps of dried moss on the upper, rotting trunk. It found a piece suitbale for nest lining. Then as it flew off with fuzz around its beak two other crows came screaming and chasing. Off they sped, not sure how it all ended but the crow pair returned about twenty seconds later. The flickers watched, for some time before work resumed.

At Deepwood yesterday, a pair of sapsuckers, one amongst his sap wells: