Not that I'm into Latin names.
This is the Latin designation for the Northern flicker. It's a bird. The species I know is the red-shafted type. It's a large bird, much larger than finches and sparrows, about the size of a small crow, if there is such a thing as a small crow. I like its looks, the flicker, but do not like its habits when they threaten my house.
That may sound over-dramatic, but I don't think so. These flickers, bug eaters, have pecked their holes into several areas of my house, and when they were here and happy to be, they drilled on the chimney cap multiple times every day. LOUD. Annoying.
I remember my neighbor, Jim, telling me, "They'll peck their way right into your attic, and then you'll never get rid of them." That went beyond nuisance. Downright scary. Made me think of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. You know, The Birds.
Measures we took to protect ourselves were not drastic--neither of us could kill one of them if we had the chance--but they seemed to work. Nail a board over one of their favorite pecking places; throw rocks, shout; spray the hose in their direction; rattle the fireplace damper. They worked, and silly me, I thought they worked forever. After all, I have not heard the bird around my house for a few years.
But he's back. Or they are. I hear them out there marking their territory, and it sounds like they're going all around my house to call out a "stay away" message to other birds. One would think that the building of a house would mark this territory as ours, now mine. But it doesn't work that way.
I don't like it. They make me nervous. And my fake owl is not fooling anyone.
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An article in the Feb/Mar 2010 Birds & Blooms mag: ? - My office is in a stucco building. Every spring, the flickers start hammering away, making holes. How can I discourage this? Answer: You describe a common problem that is not easy to fix. The birds usually tap in lieu of singing. The louder the rattling, the better the "song." You can try covering the places the birds are drilling with hardware cloth or a tarp, but they may then move to an uncovered spot. The good news is that the tapping lasts only as long as the breeding season, which is a couple of months.
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