Northern Flicker in Your Lawn: Why This Bird Is Digging for Ants

Updated October 20, 2026 · 7 min read

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Most people don’t expect to see a woodpecker walking across the grass. The flicker breaks the rules: it’s the size of a small pigeon, it hops around on the ground like a robin, and it pokes its bill into the soil over and over in the same spot.

Audubon describes it as probably eating ants more often than any other North American bird. That’s what it’s doing in your yard.

How to identify a flicker

All About Birds gives its size as 11 to 12.2 inches long and 3.9 to 5.6 ounces. That’s bigger than a robin, and far bigger than the Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers at your suet.

• Back: brown with black bars
• Front: buff with round black spots, and a black crescent bib across the breast
• Rump: bright white, obvious as it flies away
• Under the wings and tail: yellow in the East, salmon-red in the West
• Flight: strongly up-and-down, like other woodpeckers

Yellow-shafted or Red-shafted?

There are two main forms, once considered separate species. According to All About Birds:

Females of both forms lack the mustache stripe. Where the two meet, in a long, narrow zone through the Great Plains that All About Birds traces from Alaska to the Texas panhandle, they interbreed, and you can see birds with mixed features, such as orange wing linings or one red and one black mustache.

Why it’s digging in your lawn

All About Birds says ants are the flicker’s main food. It digs into the soil and uses its long, barbed tongue to lap them up. The tongue can reach about 2 inches beyond the tip of the bill.

• In one study in British Columbia summarized by Birds of the World, about 98% of food items were ants
• A Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife publication cites an Oregon biologist who found more than 2,000 ants in a single flicker’s stomach
• Flickers also eat beetles and other insects, and in fall and winter add berries and seeds, including poison ivy, dogwood, sumac, cherry and grape

Is it damaging the lawn?

No. University of Maryland Extension says birds digging in lawns need no management, because they’re eating lawn insects that can be pests, such as beetle grubs and armyworm caterpillars. If a patch looks rough, it recommends overseeding bare spots. The small holes a flicker leaves close up quickly.

Most of the time, a flicker in your lawn is simply a sign you have a healthy ant population, which is normal and not a problem.

What’s “anting”?

Sometimes a flicker, or another bird, will sit on an ant mound with wings spread, or pick up ants and rub them through its feathers. All About Birds describes flickers smearing ants over their feathers deliberately. Nobody knows for sure why. Audubon notes it may help control feather parasites. More on sunning and anting.

Do flickers come to feeders?

Not often. All About Birds notes they don’t regularly visit feeders, though the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says they’re attracted to suet, particularly in winter. A suet feeder with a tail prop, hung near trees, gives you the best chance. How to attract woodpeckers.

The better way to support flickers is to leave some ant habitat: avoid blanket insecticide treatments on the lawn, and leave a few bare, sunny patches and dead wood around the yard.

Migration

All About Birds calls the flicker one of the few strongly migratory North American woodpeckers. Audubon notes northern Yellow-shafted birds from Alaska and Canada are strongly migratory, while Red-shafted birds move shorter distances.

Drumming on the chimney

Flickers are loud drummers. In spring, a male will hammer on the loudest surface he can find, including metal gutters, downspouts, chimney caps and vents. All About Birds records a flicker in Wyoming drumming on a tractor that could be heard half a mile away. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says breeding-season drumming runs from mid-March to June, and usually doesn’t go through wood siding.

If a flicker is drilling holes in the house rather than drumming, see woodpecker pecking holes in your house.

Nest boxes for flickers

Flickers nest in cavities they dig in dead or soft wood. All About Birds gives a clutch of 5 to 8 eggs, incubation of 11 to 13 days and a nestling period of 24 to 27 days. Unlike most woodpeckers, they’ll use a nest box, if it’s set up the way they like.

A ready-made flicker box saves building a deep, heavy box yourself. Honest drawbacks: check the listing against NestWatch’s measurements, since some “woodpecker houses” are far too shallow; boxes need filling with chips every spring or flickers ignore them; starlings compete for them; and a box this size is heavy to mount. Building from NestWatch’s free plan is a good weekend project if you have the tools.

How they’re doing

Flickers are still common, but they’re declining. All About Birds reports a decline of about 1.2% a year from 1966 to 2021, a cumulative drop of 49%, based on the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners in Flight estimates a global breeding population of 12 million and rates the species Low Concern.

Common questions

Related guides

• How to attract woodpeckers
• Woodpecker pecking holes in your house
• Why is that bird lying on the ground with its wings spread?
• Nest box hole sizes by species

Sources: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds, Northern Flicker overview, identification and life history; Cornell Lab, Birds of the World, Northern Flicker food habits; Cornell Lab, NestWatch Northern Flicker nest box page; National Audubon Society, Northern Flicker field guide and “10 Fun Facts About the Northern Flicker”; Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Living with Wildlife: woodpeckers; University of Maryland Extension, Animals digging in lawns; Utah State University Extension; Partners in Flight and the North American Breeding Bird Survey, via All About Birds.