Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus). One of many birds, that I watched from the front porch of the house we stayed in during our visit to Highland County.

The Northern Flicker, along with all other woodpeckers, is in the family Picidae. They have strong bills and most woodpeckers use their bills for drumming and hammering into trees and have long sticky tongues for grabbing insects and larvae from their hammering sites. The Northern Flicker though, listens to a different drummer, and for the most part uses its bill for drumming into soil, looking for ants and beetles and their grubs. And that tongue? It can extend it 2 inches beyond the end of its bill.

And here a male Northern Flicker is either showing off why birds of his species also have the common name of Yellow Shafted Flicker, or he is directing traffic. I’m not sure which.