August 1, 2008
Northern Flicker?
Wouldn't you know we'd spot an unknown bird when my bird-wise parents are out of town, driving, and can't be called?
Tobi-wan spotted this - said it looked like "a big woodpecker with an arrow pointing down on the back of it's head" - I didn't get a good picture of the front, but it had a VERY clear D-shaped black patch (like a D pointing down, flat side up) on the chest, just below the throat. I don't remember any markings near the eye, and I thought it was more black-and-white speckled than black-and-brown, but my picture seems to tell me otherwise. They sat on our stump for a while, two of them, until a black squirrel scared them off.
As far as other identifying notes, I would've called them 'starling sized' - a little bigger than a robin, maybe. They weren't upright on trees, so they had less of that 'upright woodpecker' feel to them. But mostly that's all I had time to notice, the clear red chevron on the back, speckled back and front, and the clear black D-patch on the chest.
Here's the only good picture I got. Not bad for from a distance, through a window ...

Here's two pix I found online (not my images) that seem to confirm the identification, although neither seem quite like what I saw overall ...
the D-patch: from this site:
And the red chevron on the back of the head from this site:
What do you think? Northern Flicker?
Posted by Kim at August 1, 2008 9:56 AM

