This publish was initially revealed on September 25, 2010. It’s republished in our new “From the Archives” sequence, by which we wish to draw consideration to our huge again catalogue of greater than 10,000 birding-related posts revealed over the past 15 years or so.
A number of instances over the past couple of years I’ve had non-birder acquaintances ask me concerning the “hen with polka dots,” “a hen on my garden with polka dots,” or “the polka dot hen.” In Golden Wings, an anthology of birding tales by Pete Dunne, one in every of his tales known as “A Flicker Day for Certain” and he captures what occurs to birders throughout on the autumn days when the polka dot birds transfer:
…I picked it up on the fifth ring.
‘It’s a flicker,’ I chanted into the mouthpiece.
‘What?’ a considerably startled voice inquired.
‘It’s a flicker,’ I repeated, in my most cheerful voice.
‘There was a second’s surprised silence, then a cautious inquiry. ‘Is that this the Audubon Society?’
‘Sure ma’am,’ I replied.
‘Oh, good, possibly you may assist me. There’s an odd hen sitting on our garden that’s all brown with black spots and…’
Little question about it. A flicker day for positive.
Dunne is, in fact, referring to the Northern Flicker Colaptes auratus, or, to be extra (sub) particular as a result of he’s an east coast birder, the Yellow-shafted Flicker. You see, at one time there have been two sparkles, one with yellow underwings and one 
with purple underwings and every was thought-about its personal species.* These days are gone now, because the lumpers received that skirmish again within the Seventies, and we’re caught with the much less poetic, however maybe extra correct, Northern Flicker.
However, wait, what the heck is a flicker? A flicker is a woodpecker, however a weird type of woodpecker. One will hardly ever see a Northern Flicker doing that the majority well-known of woodpecker actions, that’s, bashing its head right into a tree (they do drum, as most woodpeckers do, as a alternative for music, however have a tendency to not drill for meals in timber). No, sparkles are extra genteel, and are vulnerable to picnics. Critically, they sit on lawns and eat what they discover there, typically turning the tables, so to talk, on ants, by consuming the little bugs on their flicker picnics. They’ve lengthy barbed tongues that are perfect for snaking into anthills and lapping up ants.
Glints are additionally odd within the woodpecker world, however not distinctive, in that they’re migratory, and it’s within the fall, when flocks of sparkles generally present up, that befuddled owners begin looking for out what the heck is on their garden. It was on a vibrant, sunny, fall day that I bought these photographs at Kissena Park in Queens, NY. Flocks of sparkles had been foraging within the space and, for as soon as, they allowed me a detailed sufficient strategy that I might get some respectable footage. I hope you want these flicker photographs as a lot as sparkles like ants!
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*There are different variations as properly. Pink-shafted Glints have a mostly-gray face, whereas Yellow-shafted Glints have a brown face. Male red-shafts sport a purple malar stripe whereas the male yellow-shafts have a black one. Each genders of the Pink-shafted Flicker lack the purple crescent on the again of the pinnacle.