Tragedy on West Eleventh...

Dedicated to the Flickers of West 11th & Hemlock...

Beautiful Mrs. Flicker feeds her nestlings dutifully.

     In an attempt to keep this Flicker Report as accurate and true as possible, I will install each day of this past weekend as it unfolded, and as an individual posting instead of trying to tell it all on one page, in one sitting. So, without further explanation and with a total broken heart, I have to tell you that a devastating tragedy has befallen our dear Flicker family and extreme measures had to be taken in order to save the babies.

Mrs. Flicker keeps the nest clean after feeding her nestlings.

Here are the events.
Friday June 10 6:45AM
     Eliza and I woke up and the first thing Eliza saw through a crack in the curtain, while still lying in bed with our dogs & cats, was Mrs. Flicker feeding on the suet paddle on our back porch. She fed for a while before filling her gullet and flying across the street to the Birch cavity that housed her nestlings. I watched her feed  a few eager gaping beaks before getting up and dressed and heading out with my dog for my morning cuppa coffee.

There is a little white knob on either side of the lower beak.

     When I came back, Mrs. Flicker was on Jill's suet paddle pecking away. I came into the house and got my camera ready. I saw her make another trip to the nest and go inside. she made a few trips to clean out the mess the babies had made in the night.
     The suet paddles were getting low and I was planning on a trip to the bird store to replenish her paddles. I mentioned to Eliza that we hadn't seen Mr. Flicker since the 6th or at the latest 7th of June. We weren't sure if he had another family, or what became of him these last few days but we weren't totally worried - just wondering when/if we'd see him again.
     It was now 8:30 AM and I was waiting to get my morning photos, so I was pretty glued on the nest, expecting her to come back at any moment.  An hour passed.  Two hours passed.
     Two and a half hours passed and the babies had now been up to the hole a few times and their shouts for mama continued to go unanswered. I have rescued quite a few baby animals and I  grew up an a small farm so I know that babies need constant care, feeding & warmth. Especially the little ones that can't feed themselves, like naked baby woodpeckers in a tree cavity. I asked Eliza to keep an eye on the nest while I walked to the store with Sparrow & Hawksley to get the suet.
     We walked up an alley and looked for Mrs. or Mr. Flicker. No sign of them. Silence. We got back home and Eli said she was worried too, that there was still no sign of her. We decided to go looking for her. Maybe she got caught somewhere, she couldn't be far. We walked around each of the four blocks that we know they travel and hunt for food. We checked the back alleys and listened. Nothing.
The babies were now leaning out of the hole with regularity, squawking for their mama to bring food. I started to feel really uneasy. This was not good. She should be here for sure by now. Eliza stayed by the nest, watching. The babies had attracted the attention of the crows. Even they were aware the babies were left alone too long.
     Eliza and I walked around the back and saw 5 or 6 crows sitting on Jill's porch. Motionless. Sombre. It was eerie. I chased them off gently and took Sparrow with me for another look. This time I did what I do when I really need to find something or someone. I walked a block from the house in no particular direction. I tried to clear my mind from worry, from guessing. I need to find her, I rolled those words across my brain to clear it from my thoughts of what ifs... I need to find her so I know what to do. I need to find her so I know the right thing to do for the babies.
     I am telling you the honest to goodness truth when I tell you that then next thing that happened was I  heard a Flicker's call. PEER! My heart started to pound... okay, call again, I heard you-... PEER! PEER! PEER! Sparrow and I trotted south towards the call and turned down the back alley... listening... listening... nothing. We waited. Nothing. We continued in the direction we had come to be facing and ended up in the alley that runs off of my parking lot. I was across the street and looked down my own alley.
     My heart sunk in my chest without me even knowing why yet. Heart pounding walking, Sparrow  beside me tucked up, squinting at me, worried and not trotting ahead with his tail all pompous. We crossed Hemlock street and I could clearly see 2 wings jutting up from the ground at an impossible angle. The word no caught in my throat, and Sparrow's tail tucked under him. He looked up at me and then his nose scented the air with great concern. He stayed close beside me, monitoring my reaction.
     I got up to whatever it was that I was reacting to and my brain tried to make sense of the muddle I was looking at. My eyes scanned the little slip of feathers and body tangled in a little arc. under one wing, tucked I finally saw her beautiful head and black beak. It was odd. No blood, not messy, just entirely ironed out into nothing but feathers.
I came into the house and told Eliza that we had an emergency. I told her I found her and that she was gone. I couldn't say the word dead about that bird. I grabbed my gloves and gathered Mrs. Flicker's little empty body as best I could. By the look of the scene, she had been busy focused on an ant hill next to the curb in the alley and some careless driver ran her over. Then the next person, and the next person for probably the whole three hours we had searched for her. This is not a small bird. This was careless, thoughtless driving.

Hungry babies call for mama Northern Flicker.

When I get into these situations, which seem to be a reoccurring theme in my life oddly, I go into auto pilot. Once I had her gathered, I went for her babies.
Ladder. Box to put them in. Suet to try to lure them up to the hole. The first ladder I was going to climb was about a hundred years old. Wooden. Eliza made me get down off of it before I was even half way up. There was a huge aluminum ladder in the other basement, pain in the ass but I got it out with Eli's help. I climbed up but the babies were naturally scared and deep into the cavity. My hand could fit in, but with a bird in it I doubted I could pull it back out. Eliza climbed up. Her arm went in deep, but not deep enough to catch anyone. We tried a little suet, and she caught the first baby. I climbed up behind her and took him and gently placed him into a dark box. We tried for about half an hour to get another one of the four babies we knew were in there but no one else came close enough to grab.

Eliza up the ladder reaching in for the nestling Flickers.

    It wasn't working, and we didn't have time to wait. I also didn't want to try a whole bunch of things that would upset them and compromise the stressed little ones any more than they were. We made the hard decision to put the baby we had, back into the nest so he would at least be with his brothers and sisters. I ran down to the fire station. Eliza called her good friend and fellow animal advocate, Alisen, who would rush right over after walking her pup.
     The fire truck at Fire Station number 4 on West 10th Avenue a block from my house was out at the moment. The fire fighter who answered the door when I rang heard me and told me I could ask the Captain, but he couldn't say either way whether or not they could help. Could I come back in half an hour, of course. I went to the landlord of the building that actually housed the Birch tree and the cavity of babies. I rang him up and explained the dire situation. He thought about it and asked for more details. I took him out to the tree and showed him what I planned to make happen. The fire department will do it if I have his permission I told him... he agreed if I was sure this was the only way to save the babies.
     I walked home and turned the corner to see firetruck #4 parked down on the corner in front of Rangoli, a great restaurant for lunch. I waited until I saw the guys around the truck and I ran down. I explained that there was a nest - that they were woodpeckers and they were rare birds and they were going to die if they didn't help us. I also completely understand if they can't help us. It's not their duty to risk their lives for birds. They run into buildings,when everyone else is running out. They are important members of our community and to ask this of them was a lot, if anything happened to them or if it all went terribly wrong their intervening could be really awful fro them.
Where? They asked... I ran to the tree a hundred yards away. You want to do this? the Captain asked his crew? They were already suiting up and cracking out the chainsaw. A small crowd gathered.
Ladder up to the tree. Secured. One guy climbs it and makes sure it's safe.
Eliza passed up my old undershirt and he crams it into the cavity to act like a plug to keep the babies low, block out some of the horrific noise, and keep it dark.
He climbs down. Suited up firefighter climbs up with chainsaw and slices the top off of the limb like butter. He climbs down with saw. First guy scoots back up the ladder and straddles himself over the branch and looks in. He pulls out my undershirt and drops it to his guy below. Ready? Here we go.

Fireman that helped rescue the Northern Flicker Nestlings.

He reaches in, One.
Two.
Three.
Four. We're going to need a bigger box.
Five.
Six.
Seven. There is some concern about seven and eight. EIGHT!?
     They passed Eliza the empty Hepa filter box full of 8 baby Flickers. Took down the ladder. Put away the chainsaw. Smiled and let us thank them briefly, and left. These big strong wonderful firemen were pleased to help us do something that was in their minds, a happy thing. They saved a bunch of rare birds!  How great is that? They asked us to let them know how they were doing, I promised I would. And will.
     So now we had a little hot box of birdies. Alisen had been on the phone the entire hour she was here, investigating and researching where we could take this precious cargo, and had all the answers. We jumped into her car and drove only a few blocks to the Night Owl Bird Hospital on West Broadway. They were waiting for us and took us right in to an exam room. The most wonderful calm angel walked quietly into the room and asked us what we had brought her. 8 baby Flickers we said, Dr. Anne Macdonald dropped her jeweler's magnifying goggles down and peered into the little box. She immediately told us to stay there and she took the nestlings into the back exam room.
    She came back a 10 minutes later and asked me for the whole story. (Read my previous posts for the back story I told this superb human being.) She asked us what our involvement was going to be. I explained that I was here to see this through and do what ever had to be done to rescue, raise and rehabilitate these guys, that after all the joy I got from their moms & dad, it was the very least I could do. She knew of a place that had successfully raised Flickers before, but it was quite a ways away, could we drive them? We could borrow Jill's car, and take them across to the sunshine coast tomorrow morning- first thing!
    We got home and not fifteen minutes later the phone rang. The Gibson's Wildlife Rehab Centre was calling. Irene was on the phone, with a sage Scottish lilt. I have that loyalty coursing through my veins as well, the familiarity was comforting. She described their setting and gave me directions. I would see her tomorrow at half past noon, and deliver a passel of baby Northern Flickers for her to nurture back to nature.
     Eliza & I went to bed knowing that things would most likely be okay after a really sad, tragic day. I looked out at the lopped off  Birch and it looked exactly as empty and quiet as I felt. Amputated. Death sucks so badly for those of us left living to feel it's sting. In my mind, I recited the things that Dr. Anne MacDonald told me.
     She explained that Mrs. Flicker was doing a good job, but clearly struggling over the loss of Mr. Flicker who had disappeared 3 days before. Six of the babies were pretty clean and fed, but two might not make it though the night. These two were the least developed, and probably couldn't make it up to the hole for feeding like the rest, so they would only got fed when mama could get past the others to get to the bottom of the cavity.
     The doctor told us that the other six would for sure thrive in the care of a rehab centre and instead of all perishing in the city because of everyone running them over in cars, poisoning them with crap to make flowers grow, weeds die and grass greener they have a better chance of surviving to full maturity in Gibson's, than in downtown Vancouver. She said that because they were brought in relatively healthy, the care giver would have less to deal with. These were all good things. Eliza set the alarm clock for 6AM, we passed out, exhausted...                  to be continued.

The empty cavity the nestlings were taken from...

May: Northern Flicker Report 3

The birch tree now has foliage, but it was bare when all this started. The flickers are very busy in the nest across the street. I am certain they are sitting on eggs, there is always someone in the cavity. They feed on our suet paddles at each shift change. They seem to take turns about every 3 hours roughly.

They have a definite habitual pattern to their day, and rain or shine they are shift changing and rotating. One thing I can't clearly make out is whether or not the two females are in rotation together or if he works both nests. I will see if there are two females there at once, but if they alternate between the male, I have no real way of differentiating.

When I was younger, my mom -spiritual teacher that she is- gave me a book written by Anne Cameron, called Daughters of Copperwoman. It's special book to say the least, with a lot of ponderable goodness throughout.

Like, "The only surviving census came from memorizers of the warrior society; from their perspective, a man had multiple wives, whereas the woman memorizor's view was that several women shared one husband." It's more than just a respect/ownership thing. Less about power, more about survival. I wonder how the Flickers feel. Does he have 2 wives, or do the females share one husband? because it looks like the females share one husband. Most of the mating ritual was between the females.

They danced through the branches of the birch tree tirelessly for weeks. He only came to watch their display during this time, there was no mating. That started after the dance between the females.

I haven't had time to thoroughly discover where the second nest is. It's close and down the back alley, but there are a few cavity nests in the hydro poles and I haven't seen any traffic to or from any of them yet. But I know there is one, because those eggs were taken with deliberate speed and to the same place each trip - not random drop sights. After the eggs were moved, there was another round of mating, my guess is to the second wife. And I think the second wife is in this tree.

What makes all this even more interesting, is that this egg moving business is a totally brand new discovery. No one has seen it, made any record of it, and we have video! 2 videos, actually.

When they were mating, the females bobbed their heads and flitted with each other around the birch for more than a week. If they were in between dances, they would rest together on the same limb. They would fly off together darting through the trees and around the rooftops. They would circle around their nest and the other one a block away and then fly back, both landing high in the bare tree, screaming for the male to come quickly, which he always did.

These days there is only some chatter in the wee morning hours, like around 5:15 AM. The it's all quiet, except for the changing of the guard... The shift changes go like this: She flies up and lands near the nest. He pokes his head out and sees her. He flies out and to either the roof or the suet paddle. She immediately lands on the nest entry-hole and hangs there a second before going inside. They know the Starling had been in and out of there during their mating dances. Now there's no chance for that to happen, because there is always someone in it or on the cavity hole!

After the shift change, she sits for about an hour and then he returns. She knows he is coming about a minute or two before he gets to the tree, so he must call and I just can't hear it - or they have a tight agreement.

He lands in the top of the tree and waits, her head poked out of the hole. He makes his way down to the cavity, limb by limb hopping down to her. He hangs on the hole as her head is poked out and then she flies away, always to the roof or the suet paddle, then to the other nest or yet one more location they come from across the street and south a block.

This is the female going into the nest. This is actually immediately after the second time they mated. She hangs outside on the cavity entry after mating, and those fluffy white feathers are all exposed, I like to make comments to Eliza like, look who has her knickers down again...

I am choked that I am still having trouble loading the videos onto this blog. I have been trying all day again and it always fails...

I love my desktop, but I worry her days are numbered... please hold out until afford to replace you, sweet eve. That's what I call my computer. And I called her that WAY before Wall-E. I called her that because she , eve, my Mac, is the mother of all creation. Which has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with art...

Eagle Vs. Poodle

If you live in BC and ever bother to look up, or if you're like me and spend most of your time staring at the sky, chances are you will see a Bald Eagle. I have often seen them circle overhead, traveling or hunting. Going from Burnaby Mountain to Deep Cove without ever flapping a wing, just riding the wind current across the water, or across the city.

That in itself is a wonderful thing, considering that this bird was once on the endangered species list. For now, here in Vancouver we still have quite a few large trees to deal with this kind of traffic, but with urban infringement we lose more and more habitat for not only an eagle's nest, but for all the birds and animals that live in that habitat.

In the Port of North Vancouver, there was a big old place that TV shows and feature films used to film in because it was abandoned, so you could work into the wee hours without disturbing residentials. It was called Versatile Shipyards. It's all expensive condos now, but just a few years ago it was these huge abandoned shipyards, covered with tons of corrugated aluminum, and built out of old growth douglas fir. Beams two and a half feet wide and forty feet long... hundreds of them. This place stood on some glorious old wilderness that once made ideal breeding grounds for these Eagles.

One morning at 5 AM, while working on a Disney movie at the time, I had reason to find myself down at these really old shipyards, and standing out on the end of a sixty foot pier. I had been standing there for about fifteen minutes, watching the sun come up to my left, and listening to the water lap against the struts. I happened to look to my right, I guess for the first time, because standing beside me about six feet away, was the biggest prehistoric creature I had ever seen. It came up to just under my shoulder in height and it's body was twice the size of my dog's. It looked at me with his giant yellow eye and slowly opened his wings, which hung off of huge muscular shoulders. I realized it was a Bald Eagle - about the size of a seven year old child. He held his arms out for a second, standing still looking at me, like, 'watch this'. Then at the same time he slowly looked away, he just tipped forward and dropped off the end of the pier.

His body arced back and his wings reached out sharp on either side of his huge brown body, his huge feet stretched tight against his powerful white tail.

The drop was about ten feet to the water, in that short distance he caught enough air to glide across and then up, higher and higher. He flapped his wings only a few times to gain more lift, and was within moments high above me, and halfway across the inlet. I was awestruck. Looking up in the sky you think they look big, but there's no real scale to judge. Seeing an giant old one standing just a few feet away was just something profound. I realized that he was there the whole time, and was just so big, he didn't register in my head, so I didn't even see him-

I have always meant to go to Brackendale, near Squamish, BC in the early spring. They do a Bald Eagle count there every year because it's the place where the salmon spawn and Eagles nest and breed. Next year for sure.

The other day we went to Deep Cove. we saw a Bald Eagle flying overhead with something white & rather large. We hoped it was just a Seagull, and not a cat or dog. There were crows chasing it relentlessly, but the Eagle just flew, low above the trees and disappeared from our view. When we got to the beach, we saw 3 more Eagles hunting. I took some video of the ruckus the crows can cause when one of the Eagles decides to land on a familiar roost. See video, below...

We keep our pug on a leash whenever there is an Eagle sighting. They have been known to grab small dogs right out from under their unsuspecting owner's nose. We had always hoped this was just an urban myth, but time and time again we hear first hand accounts. No one ever blames the Eagles, they are just hunting. Loss of food and habitat makes wild animals look elsewhere for survival. Lots of birds and animals adapt to our sloppy ways only as a last resort, they don't want to be domestic - they have no other choice. Apparently this year there are practically no salmon. None for the fishermen, none for the Eagles. And now, with dear Japan's compromised reactors relentlessly weeping nuclear devastation into the Pacific Rim, we have no idea what next year, or century for that matter- will hold.

There are several Bald Eagle Cams you can watch online. They are smart enough to NOT publish the actual physical location of these nests, so that thousands of folks don't show up to see it, but there are hundreds of Eagle nests all over the lower mainland and on the islands. If you have the dream to see a nest with your own eyes, it's possible with out even leaving the city. They are profoundly huge. Like the size of a VW beetle, suspended ninety feet above in the top of a giant fir, usually.

Important Northern Flicker Discovery!

Okay, things are back to normal on BLOGGER, and so I will attempt to share with you the most spectacular footage! The Northern Flicker doing something never before recorded, or seen - well, actually we saw this same family do this last year and no one believed us when we asked around about it. This year we got pictures AND video to back up our claims.

Without further ado, the official FIRST TIME EVER REPORT:

FLICKER MOVES THEIR EGGS!

Filmed by Jenny Macintosh & witnessed by Jenny Macintosh & Eliza Hargreaves for 2 years running:

It happened the same way last year. We watched the return of the Flickers, then the loud and colourful mating displays for weeks - followed by a quiet pause. Then one day we saw Mrs. Flicker leave the nest with an egg in her beak, HER OWN EGG! She returned mere moments later and got the next, and the next five times that we saw.

This year we watched the mating dance and then the quiet time followed. I kept my camera at the ready and we watched the nest from our side window. Not all the time around the clock, but pretty regularly. One morning over breakfast Eliza saw the first egg being moved and exclaimed! I tossed down my plate and grabbed my camera. I knew i had to be discreet because I didn't want to risk startling them or interrupting this delicate process. I crouched behind a parked car and took a still shot first to make sure I got at least SOME proof. Mr. Flicker returned and I took 2 videos of the move. It was spectacular! So lucky that we caught it happening again!

Apparently this sort of behavior for cavity nesting creatures is really unprecedented. I am trying to get this information to a cavity nesting expert at UBC, but she hasn't called me back yet.