The street in front of my house has been absolutely disgusting for the past month or so, because the house at the end of the block is constructing a new garage. They’re bringing in all the heavy duty machinery, digging a whole in the ground, and all that, so what results is a street coated in dust and dirt. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
Around these parts, we have a fair amount of urban wildlife, so to speak, that calls our neighbourhood home. We’ve got robins, starlings, crows, pigeons, raccoons, skunks, and even the occasional coyote (not of the Wile E. variety, fortunately or unfortunately). Anyways, when I was looking out my front window the other day, I spotted this bird taking what appeared to be a dust bath on the street. I don’t think it was injured (unlike the poor Hermit Warbler we saved in San Pedro). Instead, it was just flopping around in the dirt, probably in an attempt to get rid of pests and debris.
I had no idea what kind of bird it was, but luckily for me, Susanne is somewhat of an expert in the field. She almost immediately identified the winged creature as a Northern Flicker, specifically of the Red-shafted variety (let’s avoid any dirty jokes). Wikipedia says that it’s a “medium-sized member of the woodpecker family…and is the only woodpecker that commonly feeds on the ground.”
Anyways, here’s a video of the Northern Flicker having a ball on the dirty ground. That is, until my neighbour’s cat goes on the prowl.
The video was hilarious of the cat and his tag wagging all over. Good thing he didn’t get the bird though.
Before we moved out into the country it always annoyed me that my garden with all its small pools, shrubs, hidey holes and other bird friendly fauna never seemed as attractive to local birds as the parking area across the wall. It had a similar dusty surface.
We did once have a sparrow hawk eating a starling in the garden though – that was noisy!