The light snow last night had turned to almost monsoonal rain this morning, and it was ridiculously warm, well into the 50s. Walking was unlikely, so instead, I watched birds through the kitchen windows. Mostly, I spotted the usual cast of characters gleaning seed and scarfing down suet, but we had one visitor that really caught my attention... and made me race to the camera bag to quickly put on the supertelephoto. I hadn't expected that the mystery bird, which was some kind of very long-billed woodpecker, would remain in place, but when I got back into viewing position and aimed the dSLR at the critter, it stood still. Maybe it even posed. Or, more likely, it was just too wet and chilly to move very fast. In either case, I quickly realized that I had zeroed in on a Northern Flicker, an uncommoner, particularly during the winter months, that spends more time on the ground than in the trees. The Flicker often probes the soft earth for food items, particularly soil-nesting ants and their larvae, so while the adaptable bird can also subsist on seeds and fruit, Colaptes auratus tends to head to the less-frosty south for the worst part of the northeastern winter. We're still waiting for genuine cold-times weather; the Flicker is, for the moment, staying put.