Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Flicker - the real kind


We were at the camp this weekend. On Sunday morning, Steve went out to gather a few blueberries after breakfast. We have tons of bushes and tons of eensty weentsy blueberries. It was going to take him a while. I decided to do the dishes and tidy up.

There was a lot of bird song in the early morning, between 6:00 am and 8:00 am but all was quiet. Nearly. In the top of the pines a whole lot of 'kekekekeke' was going on. We thought it might be the usual chipmunk quarrels, but we hadn't seen any chipmunks around this summer.

I forgot about it. The last task of clean up is to take the grey water over to a brush wall we are building and toss it there. It is a little bit away from the kitchen area.
The naive hope is that any intruders will sniff out the brush pile and ignore the kitchen. On the way, I heard 'woka-woka-woka' That was a sort of cartoony sound. Steve heard it to and shouted from the other end of the camp to bring it to my attention.

Toss the water. 'kekekekeke' (woka-woka-woka) 'kekekeke'. I could tell it was coming from one of several possible pine trees. I stood still, listened and looked. Eventually, I figured out that there were about 5 birds doing the 'kekekeke' stuff.

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Then, this beautiful Northern Flicker flew overhead onto a dead branch. While the others were whooping it up with their 'kekekkeke's, Mr. Woka-Woka gave another call. A quieter woka-woka was heard from one of the pine trees and over he flew.
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We have a bird book by Jeffrey C. Dome, Formac Field Guide to Nova Scotia Birds


 http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0887806732

It is nicely illustrated, most of the information can be read visually instead of by text. This is helpful when in the field and a person is trying to figure out size, habitat and other things to narrow it down to a specific bird. I checked out Northern Flicker, because I wasn't positive that that was what I had seen.

Yup. The 'kekekeke' is a territorial call. 5 or so of the boys were sorting out who owned which pine tree. Mr. Woka-Woka, however, was a little more alert and he sang the mating call. While the boys argued it out, he got the girl.
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