Northern Flicker Fight Resulting To Arnold The Cat

One  beautiful summer day at noon, there was a fight between two birds. It occurred in between two trees and there was one injured. The bird was gray with a few red spots. It was rather beautiful but I was afraid to come to it's aide and it still preys on my mind to this day. Something in my mind told me it was an endangered bird. Arnold the  cat caught it and ran off with it as though he was a proud preditor. The bird was a Northern Flicker and numerous throughout the east coast.

The Northern Flicker isn't a large species of bird like it's cousins. It's  rather medium like a Scarlet Thrasher or a Blue Jay. The larger birds are more Ivory Billed Woodpecker, Red Headed Woodpecker and others in their classification. The classification in subspecies for the bird is Colaptes. Other birds in the subspecies are yellowhammer and a few other types of flickers.

The Northern Flickers are brown, grey black and red. The birds have spots like a cheetah under their stomach black and  white. The males have red spots as well as a cute little mustache. Their call is "Ki Ki Ki" which has shorter syllables than most. The main resources of their diet are bugs, berries and seeds. They love termites and ants, and you can hear them hammering for a few kilometers away in old trees doing that. the Yellow Hammer is a lot like  the flicker only it has yellow colors instead of gray black and red. Despite of a friend's thought on the Northern Flicker, the bird is very numerous on the East Coast. They mainly feed on old  trees where there are insect invasions. The trees rarely ever are destroyed by the Colaptes.

It's mainly insect invasions that cause tree deterioration. Birds cultivate trees by elliminating insect hosts that destroy the leaves and interior of the tree. If insects like Japanese Beetles, Termites and others eat on the trees, the natural resources that keep the tree alive are diminished. If a virus or disease takes over your body, the resources are destroyed if you don't get antiboitics or medicine to counteract the virus. The Northern Flicker is kind of like medicine to a tree. It keeps the bugs off and keeps insects from destroying it.



Resources

My own experience with birds and trees

The Northern Flicker On Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Flicker

Photograph Northern Flicker.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Northern_Flicker.jpg