While drinking my wake-up cup of coffee the other day, a metallic bam-bam-bam-bam-bam came hammering down the chimney. I’d left the fireplace flue open, so the racket coming from above was loud and intense.
After a pause of several seconds, the hammering resumed, a pattern that would repeat itself several times. I’d no doubt that a woodpecker had found some corner of our metal chimney cap, and I soon heard the cack-cack-cack-cack call of a Northern flicker.
I closed the flue with a thud, and that chased the bird away.
The next morning, Friday, just before 7 a.m., the flicker returned to bang away on the chimney cap. Even with the flue closed, the hammering and subsequent calls were unmistakable.
I grabbed my camera and went out the front door to try for a photo. The bird was on the back side of the chimney, so I cut through the house and went out one of the rear doors to the patio. Immediately, the flicker flew off to one of our trees. He belted out his staccato aria again, as if to tell me he was not intimidated.
I related the story at work later that day. One of my colleagues remembered an NPR story from 2024 about how woodpeckers have discovered that their territory-marking and mate-impressing calls are louder from metal soundboards than from tree wood.
That explains why Hammering Hank, as I’ve dubbed him, returned Saturday morning to rap insistently on his suburban-jungle telegraph.
I am fairly certain that Hank is the flicker that I’ve photographed a couple of times in recent weeks. In the photo atop this post, a male Northern flicker sits on the shepherd’s hook from which we hang our nyjer seed and suet cake feeders.
While I doubt I could pick him out of a lineup with other flickers, I believe I have enough circumstantial evidence to point to Hank as the culprit.
I didn’t hear him come a knocking Sunday or this morning. I don’t doubt he’ll be back, however, at least until he finds a mate. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 