Two days ago I heard a loud, "SQUEE! Bock bock bock bock." from our back yard. Two (Flicker) woodpeckers were fighting in the branches of a maple, our chickens standing around foot of the tree seemingly captivated by the spectacle. I assume the cause of the commotion was the tussle finding its way to the ground, startling the chickens.

When I realized what was going on my daughter and I crept outside to watch. The woodpeckers and chickens ignored us as we sat down at the tree. The contenders hopping from branch to branch, diving at each other, dodging, and trying to get an angle on the other. They landed together on the roof of the nearby coop jumped up in the air and locked together in a flurry of feathers. Again the loud, "SQUEEE!" right before they hit the ground, both of them alighting on their feet, one with two of the other's breast feathers in its beak. The apparent victor of the clash exaggeratedly held the feathers above its head and gently placed them on the ground before the two of them zipped away to a power line where they remained for a while, seemingly calm. My daughter recovered the two feathers, both a downy orange quill extending up to a stark black dot, and shared her experience the next morning with her class mates.

Funny I came across this article now, I'll have to share it with her when she returns from school.