Seeing a northern flicker
Seeing a northern flicker often means finding a woodpecker where you would not expect one: on the ground, probing the lawn for ants. It uses tree tools in the grass, an image for skills put to work far from where they were learned.
What it may mean
Most woodpeckers hug tree trunks. The northern flicker spends much of its day hopping on lawns and along trails, jabbing its bill into the soil and pulling out ants with a long, sticky, barbed tongue. Ants and their larvae make up a big part of its diet, and few other birds can reach them so well. It has the body of a tree specialist and has found its living in the grass. People do the same more often than job titles admit: the accountant who runs the best youth soccer team, the nurse who is the family's best negotiator, the engineer who writes the clearest letters. A flicker on your lawn shows that a skill can work best far from the place it was built for, and yours may be no different.
Depending on how you saw it
A flash of yellow or salmon-red under the wings
In the East, flickers show bright yellow under the wings and tail; in the West, salmon-red; where the two meet, birds can be a mix. Both flash a white rump as they fly off. Which side of you appears only when you are on the move?
Digging in the lawn
A flicker pecking at bare patches of lawn is most likely raiding an ant colony, not damaging the grass. What looks like a nuisance is pest control. Which helper around you looks like trouble at first glance?
A loud ringing call in spring
In spring flickers give a long, loud series of calls that carries across a neighborhood, and pairs bob and fence with their bills at each other. The noise is courtship and territory. Whose loud season around you might simply be someone making a home?
Why it happens in nature
The northern flicker is a large brown woodpecker with a spotted belly, a black bib and a white rump that flashes in flight. Unlike most woodpeckers it feeds mainly on the ground, where ants and beetle larvae form a large share of what it eats, and its long tongue reaches deep into anthills. Eastern birds have yellow wing and tail shafts, western birds red.
To reflect on
Where do your skills work best, even if it is far from where you learned them?