Northern Flicker

If you haven't visited the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds page, I recommend it, especially in conjunction with a good bird book.

All week, I've been listening to a bird that sounded an awful lot like a Pileated Woodpecker. The only problem is that I haven't seen any Pileated Woodpeckers in this neck of the woods recently.  (I did see one down at Shin Pond last week, though.)

At any rate, my bird book alone wasn't helping.  I could hear them (and from the sound, we have 5 or 6 hanging around), but I couldn't see them.  That's where All About Birds came in; they have sound clips for the vast majority of birds they have on file, and they have a lot of birds on file.

I finally saw a Northern Flicker on one of the birch trees in the yard this evening (thank you, NWF Field Guide to Birds of North America) and found out from the Cornell Lab that it does make a call very similar to that of a Pileated Woodpecker.  One sound clip even names the call the "pileated" call.  Mystery solved!  Of course, I have friends for whom that would have presented no mystery whatsoever, but for the rest of us, it's good to have the resources at hand.  Happy birding!