[Tweeters] large numbers of flickers

[Trileigh Tucker via Tweeters]

Gary,

Thank you for posting this astounding datum. I’m impressed by two aspects of it: the number of flickers—boy would I give a lot to have witnessed that—and the precision of the counting. My mind is boggling trying to picture both of those phenomena.

Trileigh


Trileigh Tucker
Pelly Valley, West Seattle
NaturalPresenceArts.com<http://naturalpresencearts.com/>



From: Gary Bletsch via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, September 6, 2024 at 5:41 AM
To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Tweeters] large numbers of flickers
Dear Tweeters,

Thanks to Carol Riddell for posting her friend's friend's question, about large numbers of flickers. I could not remember ever seeing any large concentration of flickers, so I did a little digging on eBird.

One way to explore this would be to use the "Explore Regions" tool on eBird. I started with the United States, then clicked on "Bird List." Then I clicked on the tab for "High Counts." Then it's easy to find the highest all-time count of any species, simply by going Ctrl + F for "find," and typing in "Northern Flicker." Voila.

Wow. The largest count of NOFL ever for anywhere on Earth was 22,721 flickers on 1 October 2003 at Cape May, New Jersey. That's a lot of flickers. The highest count for the Eastern Hemisphere is one; for example, a single flicker showed up in Portugal one time; that would have been a very rare bird over there, indeed.

For Canada, the high count was 1254 flickers on 10 April 2023 in Lambton, Ontario.

Washington State's high flicker count was 150 birds at Discovery Park on 20 September 1998.

Oregon's was 325 birds on 26 September 2018 at Bonney Butte, Hood River County.

Michigan's was 790 birds on 9 April 2023 at Saugatuck Dunes State Park.

New York State's highest was 4000 birds on 13 April 2001 at Robert Moses State Park, Long Island.

A high count of 773 flickers was tallied at Lake Erie Bluffs Metropark, a short ways east of Cleveland, Ohio. Hey, that's not that far from where I live now--maybe I should run over there in a few weeks!

Neither Skagit County nor even Clallam County have had any three-digit flicker counts, at least not that show up on eBird. I would have guessed that maybe Neah Bay might be a place for such a phenomenon, but the high count there was just 36 birds on 26 September 2009.

I myself do not recall ever seeing a large flock of migrant flickers. My poor old AviSys birding software has suffered a serious crash--which I should be trying to fix right now, instead of rooting around knee-deep in Flicker data on eBird! Anyway, by using eBird, I was able to ascertain that, despite doing tons of birding over the course of fifty years, especially in Washington State, the only two-digit counts I've had have come on Christmas Bird Counts, especially on the Bellingham CBC, for some reason. Those were modest counts of ten to twenty birds.

So I would say that it is a rather rare event to find a big flock of migrant flickers, which is what these big flocks seem to be. The two best times of the year appear to be April, and then early autumn. I am guessing that  the great birding magnet spots, such as Cape May and Pt. Pelee, might be likely spots to search for such a thing, offering slightly better odds than does the lottery.

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch
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