Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Colaptes

This beautiful female Northern Flicker was busy building a nest in this tree cavity, on 22 April 2014, at Carburn Park. "Both sexes help with nest excavation. The entrance hole is about 3 inches in diameter, and the cavity is 13-16 inches deep. The cavity widens at bottom to make room for eggs and the incubating adult. Inside, the cavity is bare except for a bed of wood chips for the eggs and chicks to rest on. Once nestlings are about 17 days old, they begin clinging to the cavity wall rather than lying on the floor. Northern Flickers usually excavate nest holes in dead or diseased tree trunks or large branches. In northern North America look for nests in trembling aspens, which are susceptible to a heartrot that makes for easy excavation. Unlike many woodpeckers, flickers often reuse cavities that they or another species excavated in a previous year. Nests are generally placed 6-15 feet off the ground, but on rare occasions can be over 100 feet high. Northern Flickers have been known to nest in old burrows of Belted Kingfishers or Bank Swallows." From AllAboutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/northern_flicker/lifehistory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Flicker

A beautiful Northern Flicker hybrid, stopping long enough to briefly turn its head away from the cavity it was busy making. He's using his tail for balance. Photographed at Carburn Park on March 3rd. Words from a local naturalist, that were made about a previously-posted Northern Flicker, that explain what a hybrid looks like: "This photo shows characteristics common to the Northern Flickers in the Calgary area. All of our birds are basically hybrids between the western Red-shafted and the eastern Yellow-shafted forms. This bird is a male, indicated by the moustache or malar stripe. This is normally red in the western form and black in the eastern form. Both colours occur on this bird. The yellow shafts of the eastern form are plainly visible in the wing of this birds. Also characteristice of the Yellow-shafted is the red nape patch. Uncharacteristic is the gray throat, typical of the western form. The markings around the eye, while most like the western form, are more exaggerated." www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_flicker/id/ac en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Flicker