I didn’t ask for a fireplace in my bedroom. We hardly use it. And it means that when a loud clanging noise emits from said fireplace at six in the morning on a Saturday, it jolts me awake.
The first time I bolted upright. It sounded like there was an animal trapped in my chimney. I warily opened the flue, expecting a sooty bird to flutter out, but it was empty.
Eventually I realized the sound was percolating down the chimney, so I went outside to get a look. There I spotted a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) drumming away on top of my chimney cap. Is it a cap or a cowl? I don’t know my chimney parts but it’s a metal thing on top that keeps the rain and animals out.
I wonder if this behavior is unique to the species, at least around me. I once observed a Northern Flicker drumming on a metal streetlight at Ann Arbor’s County Farm Park. I had thought woodpeckers peck into wood for food, but Wikipedia says they also use drumming to communicate:
Like most woodpeckers, northern flickers drum on objects as a form of communication and territory defense. In such cases, the purpose is to make as loud a noise as possible, so woodpeckers sometimes drum on metal objects.
I’ve experienced this early wake-up call several times in recent years. And I recently saw a Flicker – the same one that had just been waking me up? – drumming on my neighbor’s chimney cap across the street. When I texted them about it, they were inside trying to figure out what was causing the noise.
Last month I saw this bird feather around the corner from my house:
iNaturalist suggested the feather belonged to a Northern Flicker and several community members confirmed it. I hadn’t noticed the bird’s gold feathers (that’s where the name auratus comes from) from observing it perched so was surprised at this ID but the photos on Wikipedia show its golden underbelly. Maybe my wake up friend dropped this.
It’s a little annoying, but it doesn’t seem worth fighting. So far it’s been infrequent and, I think, only in the spring or early summer. The biggest discomfort came from not understanding the banging noise emanating from my fireplace, which is why I wrote this quick post: just in case anyone else is trying to figure out what’s happening. I hope our roof doesn’t need servicing for many years, but when that happens, maybe they can put an owl statue or some shiny ribbons up there as a deterrent.
P.S. As I went to publish I saw a button in WordPress offering to “generate title options” that would improve my SEO. Curious, I clicked it, and it suggested:
- Northern Flickers: The Unexpected Noise in Your Chimney
- What to Do About Noisy Birds Drumming on Your Chimney
- Understanding Northern Flickers: The Sounds They Make
I hate this! It says these would “position my content as informative” and I agree they would likely get more clicks, but under a deceptive premise. This post does not deliver on any of those titles.
Someone has probably generated posts like those full of AI slop. And that right there is a big piece of what’s wrong with the web and search in particular.
The idea for this post occurred to me on a dog walk. I often write in my head on such walks and rarely do the ideas end up published here, to my chagrin. I played with the idea of dictating my thoughts during the walk and having AI clean up the typos and structure. The theory was that it would get me 90% of the way there and increase the number of posts I actually finish. But it added another editing step of putting the post back into my own words and tone and in the end did not save any time over cleaning up my own dictation.
Enough for now. Just had to let this post drift into another topic, which I can do because I’m a human being and it’s my own dang blog. More posts to come soon, I hope!