Feisty Picids

It was John Janovy, I think, who said that any cartoon about a real  woodpecker would have to be x-rated. I suspect that he was alluding to the “reverse mounting” for which picids are notorious, but it’s not just sex, there’s  plenty of violence in a woodpecker’s life, too.

Just watch Hairies and Downies squabbling at a feeder, or Red-headeds mixing it up with European Starlings in the bottomland forests of the Midwest.

Yesterday morning at Kokanee Creek, I heard a Pileated Woodpecker drumming. It didn’t take long to find it, high in a snag above the parking lot at the dog beach–or to see that I wasn’t the only one interested in the big picid.

As I watched, four Red-shafted Flickers flew in, landed above and around the Pileated and began their squeaka-weecking, tails spread wide. I’d never seen such a vigorous interaction between the two species, and could only attribute it to the flickers’ own interest in the snag as a potential nest site. I’ll be keeping an eye out over the next couple of weeks to see what develops. And who knows, maybe making a little money selling woodpecker videos on the web.