Following the advice of "the internet," I put up a second nest box hoping the swallows wouldn't drive away the bluebirds again this year. It didn't work. The swallows seem to have claimed the new box, and the old box is empty. On occasion, I see the bluebirds in the neighborhood, but they have abandoned my yard.

But there has been a Northern Flicker coming to the low birdbath several times a day the past few weeks, and I've been deploying the motion trigger with various camera and lens configurations to get images of him. Yesterday I tried the 500mm lens, first on the old 1D Mark II, and next on the 5D Mark III. Today I went with the 6D Mark II and the 100-400mm zoom set on 400mm. With motion trigger, I always prefocus. The two shots from today, the first is zoomed out a bit because the focus is slightly off (and to show the water drops in the air), while the second image is a bit better so I cropped it tighter. The flicker seems to reliably come to the left side of the birdbath, so maybe I will set the camera closer and take a chance with autofocus. I've never tried autofocus with motion trigger. The best solution photographically would be to dig my hunting blind out of the shed and devote half a day to sitting behind the camera. That's probably not going to happen soon. Anyway, no more images today, the weather has turned cloudy and cold. It feels like April, not mid-June.

In addition to these images, there also was an out-of-focus shot of a female flicker. So hopefully we will get something of her, and perhaps later in the year there will be offspring coming to get a drink. In late July 2021, one of my trail cameras captured three flickers at once in that location when the birdbath was a plant tray anchored by a big rock. "The internet" says that flickers usually nest in tree hollows and only rarely in the ground. Since there are no large trees nearby and behind us we have an unmowed field with a ditch running through it, I wonder if our pair is one of those rare exceptions.

1D Mark II, 500mm lens

5D Mark III, 500mm lens

6D Mark II, 100-400mm zoom at 400mm

6D Mark II, 100-400mm zoom at 400mm