Nature clicks #200 - Northern Flicker

 

Surprise, surprise (not really), we had some fresh snow on the ground this morning… I got up early to take advantage of the great light, provided by a slightly diffused sun and the snow as a reflector. First I followed some fox tracks in the snow back to the rocks and the valley behind the house. The tracks in the snow told me that the fox had checked the old den from last year and I wonder if we will see another litter of fox pups again. Second, the light made the colors of the moss on the rocks pop and in combination with the snow it was worth a few clicks to me.

Back at the house I set up the tripod with camera and long lens attached on the porch and it took only a minute and the woodpeckers showed up. I counted four Downy, one Hairy ,and three Red-bellied Woodpeckers. However, the star of this early morning was a male Northern Flicker. We have here the eastern form of the flicker, the yellow-shafted, as you can easily identify by the second photo. It is this time of the year when most of the birds get a color boost because of the mating season. I wrote it before, this is the first winter in the last ten years that we have seen the flicker all winter long. Usually they have been here only a few days in very early spring.

It took only a few hours and all the new snow melted away. The old one is getting icy and may take still a while to disappear.

It is my 200th blog post “Nature clicks”. I started this category four years ago and it became the stage for photos and information about critters and other things in nature that got my interest. I think the Northern Flicker with its wonderful colors is a great bird to celebrate this little milestone in my ongoing photography journey. Thank you to all my friends and visitors of this blog for stopping here regularly or occasionally!

Nature clicks #188 - Female Northern Flicker

 

It is this time of the year when temperatures may go below zero, both, in degree Celsius and Fahrenheit. It is also a great time for bird photography for two different reasons. First the birds come close to the house, to feeders, and most importantly to places where they can get some water to drink. If you make the efforts to provide food and water, by means of a heated bird bath for instance, you can create a good environment that draws the birds close to your camera. The second reason is the light. The snow that covers the ground works like a giant reflector and helps to make decent images without fiddling with additional light sources. Yes, a fill flash coming from a little softbox might be very helpful, especially if the sun is hidden behind clouds, but with sun light the “snow reflector” does a pretty good job.

I had written before here in the blog that we have seen up to six different woodpecker species on our ridge above the Little Maquoketa River Valley. The Northern Flicker is one of them but usually we see them only briefly during late autumn or from late winter into early spring. However, this season we watch a couple of  them every day. This is the biggest woodpecker that comes to our feeders. They are slightly bigger than an adult Red-bellied Woodpecker. The Northern Flicker is only outsized by the Pileated Woodpecker but these big birds do not visit the suet feeders or even come near the house.

Today I had a chance to make a few clicks on this female Northern Flicker. Both sexes are easy to distinguish. The females resemble the males and have a black half moon shaped spot on their chest but they lack the black moustache stripes in their face. The Northern Flickers seem to be a lot more cautious and nervous than the other woodpeckers that are here all year long and so I’m very happy to share this image with you today.

Nature clicks #139 - Eastern Gray Squirrel

 

I had recently an image of an Eastern Gray Squirrel here on the blog but can you really blame me if I like to show you a couple more if they were shot in really great light? Snow is in general a nice reflector to get some light underneath a critter but if the sun is out it gets even better and the colors come out in a much better way. Some pixel peepers may say, but wouldn't it be better to color correct the snow so it doesn't look so bluish? I'm a big a fan of leaving it just the way it is. The blue is the reflection of the sky and there is no other color that tells the story about cold temperatures better than blue.

That giant reflector

 

It was really cold here during the last couple days but we got this giant reflector out again, called snow. This is ideal for bird photography or any critter. The sun light bounces off the snow and gives that extra little bit of light from underneath that makes a huge difference most of the time for your image.