Sssshhh, I Am Hunting Flickers

Morning adventures with Strix varia

Someone was hunting flickers this morning, which uhhh, well hell, who even knew that was a thing?

I was maybe a mile out on my morning walk and hearing all the usual suspects, bird-wise when some unseen tripwire triggered all hell breaking loose a hundred yards farther up the trail; three or four Stellar's jays screaming and four or five flickers, quite obviously rattled by something, flying this way and that, vocalizing nervously as they flew and disappearing into heavy foliage, as if hiding.

Took a few minutes but I finally spied the Barred Owl (Strix varia), who was inspiring all this tumult. He was perched serenely on the branch, as you see him here, but looking down and away so that I could only see his barred back. He was studying something quite intently.

Each time I took a few more steps to my right to try to line up a better viewing/shooting angle, hoping to see what he was studying so intently, he'd swivel his head to see what I was up to, consider me, quite impassively for a moment, then turn back to whatever had him so fascinated in the brush beyond.

I changed positions by ten foot increments three separate times, each time waiting for him to look my direction again before firing off another half-dozen photos.

Eventually, he took wing and flew a hundred feet or so, slightly uphill to the immense trunk of a Big Leaf Maple, which he then banked around in a tight circle before spinning a vertical one-eighty and recircling it in the opposite direction. Crazy!

A frightened Northern Flicker flushed suddenly on this second pass and flew hurriedly toward a cedar while the jays began screaming again and a couple of other flickers darted this way and that, apparently as a diversion. Pandemonium.

Outmaneuvered, Mr. Owl flew up to an eight-inch moss and fern covered maple branch and let the situation calm a bit.

Maybe five minutes passed before he started shuffling his exquisitely taloned feet and flexing on his perch, hinting that he was about to fly again. And then, floom, he did. Wings extended, he swooped downward and across a thirty foot opening in the forest before again, flushing another flicker, this time from an alder, which he then chased in dogfight fashion through tree trunks and branches in a long, semi-circular route while jays taunted and other flickers scurried for cover. It was magnificent!

That flicker, too, managed to get away and the owl, apparently tired of failure alighted on a small branch deep within the foliage of a Western Red Cedar, there to become invisible again, waiting patiently for things to settle.

When I finally walked away the woods were still almost silent and had been for minutes. High in the canopy above there were occasional winged sorties, voiceless glimpses of Stellar's jays flying between the trees and changing leaves, and there was a single, oblong silhouette, unmoving, forty feet up in a cedar, perched on a two-inch branch and less than a foot from its fragrant trunk.

I have no idea what that many flickers were doing hanging out together this morning and had no idea either that owls might see Northern Flickers as worthy prey. So I definitely observed something new to me today …by listening carefully to everything going on around me, by honing in on the blabber-mouthing of a couple of Stellar's jays (almost always a good idea), by walking slowly in their direction, waiting, waiting for my curious eyes to find the object of all that shrieking scorn, then quietly waiting some more until one of the players made the next move.

Helluva morning wander.

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— at Beautiful West Seattle.