My favorite bird in Idyllwild is the Northern Flicker. It’s just so BIG and so beautiful, and kind of elusive. You don’t see them regularly like the Stellers Jay (which is also big and beautiful but EVERYWHERE). The Flicker is like spotting a shooting star. You only spot one now and then. One might land on your suet feeder and it’s so big it sends the feeder swinging. Most of the time you’ll scare one that’s on the ground feeding and it will fly up to a branch. They are territorial like all woodpeckers so if you are lucky enough to have one frequent your property, you are indeed lucky.

They are a woodpecker, but unlike most woodpeckers, they are ground feeders. They mostly feed on ants, but also beetles, grubs, etc. They have unusually long tongues that have sticky saliva that they can probe down into ant holes. One Northern Flicker that was found had 5000 ants in his stomach. They live about 8 years and are fairly solitary or with a mate. They are the biggest bird in the woodpecker family.

Just in case you missed this recommendation earlier…one of my favorite FREE APPS that I have on my phone is from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and it’s called “MERLIN”. It’s free to download and no matter where you are, you can answer 4 easy questions about where you are, the size of the bird you see, it’s main colors, and where you saw it (at a feeder, on the ground, etc.). It will give you a line-up of possibilities and you choose the bird you saw then read about it and hear its calls too. I LOVE having it on my phone especially when I travel.