The Summer of the Flickers
Old photographs can trigger beautiful memories.
(Listen to the radio version here.)
Today, right while I was listening to flickers calling in my yard, I came across a bunch of old slides from 1994. Suddenly my mind and heart were flooded with lovely memories of our family’s Summer of the Flickers.
It started with heartache. During a big storm, the top of a flicker nest tree somewhere in Duluth crashed to the ground, snapped apart right at the cavity entrance. Even with the roof blown off, the parents were still feeding the nestlings, so the people who owned the property were going to leave them to it. But then a crow flew in, plucked out one of the nestlings, and flew off with it still struggling. The homeowners got a ladder but before they could reach the tree, the crow returned and grabbed a second. The people retrieved the other two nestlings and brought them to the only licensed wildlife rehabber in Duluth at the time—me.
The two nestlings were already well feathered. The breast of one was covered with dark, round spots; the other with much tinier speckles, so of course we named them Spot and Speckles.
I’d taken care of lots of baby birds before this, but never a woodpecker, so I was surprised that these two didn’t flutter or hop about the way robins or jays at this stage in development do. That was simply because developing in the confinement of a tree cavity is way different from developing in an open cup nest. As baby woodpeckers get bigger and stronger, they work their way from the nest floor to the entrance hole to beg for food, but stay securely inside the cavity until they’re capable of powered flight. That made them exceptionally easy to care for, even as they approached full size. I put old towels on the backs of two chairs with newspapers on the seats, and they’d hold fast as if stuck with Velcro.
I knew that even while they are in their nest cavity, baby woodpeckers get some sun exposure at the entrance hole—that’s essential for their growing bodies to manufacture Vitamin D. To make up for them being stuck indoors, I took a daily walk with them clinging to my shorts.
I fed them a powdered commercial baby bird food mix with an eyedropper. Baby woodpeckers grasp their parent’s bill and the parent regurgitates semi-digested insects down their throats, which was pretty easy to mimic with the eyedropper.
For the week or so that the flickers were true nestlings, they were easy to care for, but I knew that as soon as they could fly at all, they’d be in danger inside. Not one room of our house was big enough to allow them more than one or two wingbeats before crashing into a wall.
Luckily, I figured this out in time, and started keeping them in a Wood Duck house in a dead apple tree in our yard before they even tried flying. From the start, my sons and I had always whistled before we fed them, and we kept this up consistently, so when the little flickers could fly, they’d come to our whistling if they were hungry.
During the first week or so, they were approaching other people, too. I learned later that one man down the block thought he was the “bird whisperer” because they alighted on him. But he didn’t know how or what to feed them, and they quickly grew more selective.
During the time they were indoors, we’d kept them on two separate chairs, so we didn’t notice how aggressive baby flickers can be with their siblings. But now that they could fly about, when they came for a feeding at the same time, if they both landed on the same arm or shoulder, they’d attack each other viciously, often aiming for each other’s eyes.
Baby birds have a wider mouth than adults, often with a soft gape where the upper and lower mandibles meet. These baby flickers had harder tissue projecting outward a bit there—a firm, pearly projection. I’d never handled any baby woodpecker before, so didn’t know this was a feature common to the whole family. Some people believe the whitish projections help the parents aim for the babies’ mouths in the dark nest cavity, which makes sense, but watching these flickers jousting, I noticed that those mouth projections deflected an attacking sibling’s bill away from the eyes, so these little projections may serve a bit of a protective function, too.
The boys got very good at maneuvering them to keep them from perching on the same shoulder or arm. Sometimes one would lunge at the other one behind our back. Joe found a way to feed them both at the same time, or at least distract the one who wasn’t guzzling at the eyedropper.
Anyway, despite being so aggressively competitive about food, Spot and Speckles were inseparable. Day by day, they spent less and less time in our yard, but whenever one of us spotted them anywhere, they were together.
I showed them a couple of good ant hills in the neighborhood, but could hardly demonstrate how to stick my tongue down the holes to pull up half a dozen tasty ants at a time. Fortunately, they tasted some of the ants scurrying about and quickly figured that out themselves.
I also could not demonstrate how to hear grubs inside a tree trunk, much less how to slam my face into the tree right where a grub was chewing away under the bark. And I had no idea at the time that flickers eat a lot of berries, too. I don’t think most people appreciate just how much of an education birds give their young. My deficiencies as a flicker parent meant that these young birds had to pick up a lot of basic life skills on the streets.
As the mass of flickers moved on from the northland by late September, my two flickers were still here. I knew they were getting most of their food on their own—when school started, they came first thing in the morning but then often stayed away all day until the boys came home. And even with less frequent feedings, they were taking smaller and smaller helpings.
Sometimes when I’d go outside and whistle, I’d feel anxious if they didn’t instantly fly in, though the whole point of raising baby birds is to help them live as natural a life as possible completely independent of us. Even knowing that, we all felt a little bereft in mid-October when they stopped coming for good.
Through the long winter, we wondered how they were faring. Birds never call or send a postcard to let us know where they are or how they’re doing, and back then, texting wasn’t an option. Just as we’d done for countless other baby birds we’d raised and released, we settled into a peaceful acceptance that we’d done our best and that was that. Of course, you can’t help but wonder…
The next spring, Joe came home from his paper route bursting with excitement. A block or two away, he’d heard a flicker, looked up to see it studying him, whistled—and it flew right to him!
Flickers don’t get food from their parents after they reach independence, and this one wasn’t asking for a handout—it was just saying hello, and it didn’t linger long enough for Joe to notice whether it was Speckles or Spot. But it had survived the long winter, and not just remembered my boy but gave him a friendly greeting. Just thinking about this thirty-one years later, I’m still filled with joy and wonder.
Because I’m not a non-profit, I was always prohibited as a licensed rehabber from accepting donations to cover essential medications and food; all my rehab work was done at my own—well, my family’s—expense. And much of wildlife rehabilitation is heartbreaking. But no mere billionaire has ever known the kind of real wealth my life with birds and family has given me.
I agree with Steven...and also the gift you have given us!!! Thanks so much for sharing this heart warming story...and the pics are so precious/priceless!!!!
What a gift you have given your
children with your natural history examples they were able to participate in and maybe pass on to
their children.