A Mystery

I’ll admit, I’m puzzled. The flickers that created a nest before my eyes about 3 weeks ago seem agitated today, and there are more of them — I’ve counted 4 adults.

Zooming in on the nest cavity, I saw this.

The face looking out suggests a young bird saying, “Feed me!” But the bird in the hole looks like an adult, and I I didn’t see any feeding take place.

No one emerging from the hole looks like a fledgling, either. The one in flight in this picture is an adult male, based on his “mustache” — the black streaks under his eyes.

Between the Handbook of Nature Study and All About Birds, I learned that the incubation period for Northern flickers is 11-13 days, and the nestlings stay in the nest for another 3-4 weeks. There’s no way there are baby birds in there.

Fellow flickers wouldn’t be predators either. So, strange. Maybe the additional 2 flickers were passing through and investigating, and it panicked the local residents. Or maybe they’re last year’s hatchlings, back to the territory they know and figuring out where to settle. No sure answers. Hopefully the drama will pass and this year’s brood will succeed.

This post was written on May 8.