Phrases that Linger
Many of us older individuals can clearly recall phrases from our childhood that were either used against us or to encourage us during our young lives.
With a busy house full of eight water bugs, my father would often say, “Settle down. Do you have ants in your pants?” Before I realized what a figure of speech was, I wondered what kind of experience my dad must have had at some point in his life, causing him to inquire if we were suffering the same experience.
This Northern Flicker has a relationship with ants, although not in the same vein as my dad had in mind. Ants are one of the main meals of this member of the woodpecker family.
Unlike their head-knocking woodpecker cousins, Northern Flickers are more likely to be observed on the ground than in trees. In mid-to-late September, alert bird watchers will readily see them fluttering along country roads in small groups, searching for ants in the yellowing grasses as they eat heartily in preparation for their migration to the south, as far as Central America.
Flickers are well adapted to probe ant hills or beetle tunnels. They have a long, barbed tongue that they can extend up to two inches to unearth their six-legged prey.
While in Minnesota, they are busy. In the spring, the male and female work together to prepare a hollowed-out nest, incubate eggs, and feed a young family of six to eight beggars.
Upon their return from their winter vacation, they may not return to the same nest, but they do come back to the same stretch of woods or other foraging territory from which they left.
(Photographed near Cambridge, MN)
Phrases that Linger
Many of us older individuals can clearly recall phrases from our childhood that were either used against us or to encourage us during our young lives.
With a busy house full of eight water bugs, my father would often say, “Settle down. Do you have ants in your pants?” Before I realized what a figure of speech was, I wondered what kind of experience my dad must have had at some point in his life, causing him to inquire if we were suffering the same experience.
This Northern Flicker has a relationship with ants, although not in the same vein as my dad had in mind. Ants are one of the main meals of this member of the woodpecker family.
Unlike their head-knocking woodpecker cousins, Northern Flickers are more likely to be observed on the ground than in trees. In mid-to-late September, alert bird watchers will readily see them fluttering along country roads in small groups, searching for ants in the yellowing grasses as they eat heartily in preparation for their migration to the south, as far as Central America.
Flickers are well adapted to probe ant hills or beetle tunnels. They have a long, barbed tongue that they can extend up to two inches to unearth their six-legged prey.
While in Minnesota, they are busy. In the spring, the male and female work together to prepare a hollowed-out nest, incubate eggs, and feed a young family of six to eight beggars.
Upon their return from their winter vacation, they may not return to the same nest, but they do come back to the same stretch of woods or other foraging territory from which they left.
(Photographed near Cambridge, MN)