Northern Flicker

This interesting and unique bird visited our backyard a few weeks ago, and he’s been showing up around our yard off and on ever since. I thought at first it might be a migrant since I had never seen it before, but then I found out it was called a Northern Flicker, and lives here all year round. It’s a member of the woodpecker family, but our trees are safe because it is the only woodpecker that uses its long beak to get insects out of the ground, which is what it is doing in these pictures.