Flickers declaring breeding territory - It's Hammer Time!

Same bird, photographed from behind (left) and side (right).  Munson Pond, Kelowna.

It's hard to go outdoors and not notice the hammering.  Sometimes, it's hard not to be inside and not notice it, especially when they find a piece of tin attached to your fireplace chimney.  I walked around Munson Pond today and heard about a half dozen of them proclaiming their claimed area to be the best around.  

Northern Flickers are perhaps the most abundant woodpecker; they are found throughout the US year-round and much of Canada during breeding season.  And, at the beginning of breeding season, you can expect to hear their familiar trill call and their territorial hammering.  

I managed to take a video today of the same one, letting all others know what was his.  You can see it below.  You may want to turn up the volume to hear the hammering.


As you can probably tell, I did this handheld.  I used my D500 Nikon with my 500 mm and a 1.4x teleconverter.  It gave me a relative focal length of around 1050 mm, so the overall job was OK.  Thanks for vibration reduction!

Thank you for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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