December 29: Today Kimberly and I took part in the Christmas Bird Count centered on Fremont, Ohio. We saw only ten Northern Flickers for the day, but eight of those were together in a flock.
Flickers aren't usually considered to be very sociable, so when we saw three fly across the road within a few yards of each other, we were surprised and we stopped to look. Within the next few moments, another five flickers followed. For a minute, all eight of the birds were visible. They were perched in three adjacent trees, and all the birds were several yards apart. But since we hadn't seen any other flickers within miles of this spot, it was clear that they really were associating with each other, and that as loose as their grouping was, it qualified as a flock. The eight flickers soon left these trees, and they left one by one, but they all flew in the same direction, going toward a particular spot on the edge of a nearby woodlot.
I've often seen loose flocks of eastern (Yellow-shafted) flickers flying together in migration. When I lived in Arizona, I would sometimes find loose groups of western (Red-shafted) flickers foraging together on the ground during migration seasons. A winter flock like the one we saw today is something I've encountered only a few times. The Birds of North America account (Wiebe and Moore 2008) says that the species is "Not social but may forage in loosely structured groups at any time of year." If more birders were specifically watching for this behavior, we might learn more about the situations in which it occurs.
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