WEBVTT

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Thank you, Eric.

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I learned about the
BioBlitz not long

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after I moved here, which
was just about a year ago.

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So I'm feeling all
sort of homey now.

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This is "The Gilded Flicker.

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Clear."

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"Is it because the late August
air is otherwise so quiet

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that the call of a flicker
sounds so clear and so strong?

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I remember how, during Utah
Augusts, there would be,

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above our acreage or
in the mountains, only

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the occasional birdie chatter,
siskins and robins, finches

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and chickadees, a hawk,
a briefly rowdy riot

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of magpies or ravens.

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But that list suggests,
wrongly, a cacophony.

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Bird sound in late
summer is mostly

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broadcast from some kind
of ambient enviro-channel,

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background nature sounds
on New Age satellite radio.

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The volume is barely turned up.

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The signal's often lost in
all the drowsy air, the months

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as whispery as it is hot.

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A flicker's call
spears the air the way

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its skull-wrapped tongue
shoots out to slurp up ants

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from the ground.

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A flicker's quick call
is a high-pitched stab,

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'keer,' or, as I hear it,
now 'clear,' a floured spike

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of glass, shooting from
the hollow of your chest.

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In August, the
flicker's call sharpens

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the air, drops the
temperature a second,

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tells languid fall
to hurry along.

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'Clear' is a tangy call that
calls out diminished things.

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I really knew flickers
first in Kansas, unaware

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of where they'd take me.

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Flickers nested in the
cavity of a hackberry tree

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outside my window.

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Their calls, their drumming
beaks on the roof and utility

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poles' metal casings were an
exuberance I learned from.

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They poked their
heads out of the hole

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like Ovidian fables
born instantly

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from darkness in the bark.

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They drum their
bills on the pergola.

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They fly to dead cottonwoods.

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They'd call 'clear,' rising,
mountains rising, clear,

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water rushing beneath.

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How odd, how old, their
panache and surreal antiquity,

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flickers in Utah.

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Like the call of an
ashram gong, their notice

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would tell me to
stop whatever it

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was that seemed so important.

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Because nothing mattered
more than 'clear'

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and the silence after.

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The sky got bigger then.

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If I ask how it is I
came to the Southwest,

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the flicker would answer
that its name is a verb.

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What I knew in Kansas and
Utah was the northern flicker,

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a Jay-sized brownish
woodpecker with a barred back.

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That sounds dull.

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Flickers are
vivacious and elegant,

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a black sash of a chest, pale
belly polka-dotted with black.

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Males in the West daubed
red on their cheeks,

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red or yellow on the underside
of their tails and wings,

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red in the West,
yellow in the East.

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The gilded flicker, not
respecting geography

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in this instance,
is yellow-shafted,

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though its range is
distinctly Southwestern.

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Maybe gildeds forged
their yellow feathers

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from all that Sonoran sunshine.

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After all, they live
exclusively among saguaros.

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Their calls average higher
pitched than northerns,

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one field guide tells me, but
I can't hear much difference.

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This guide also
says both species

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are essentially identical.

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In fact, where gilded
and northern intermix,

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they'll sometimes breed.

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They hybridize.

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Gilded or northern,
they're flickers.

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What makes a bird?

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When, bewildered to
live here, I first

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stood looking at a
swale of saguaros,

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the mountains piled
up close by like all

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the right mysterious reasons,
I saw a gilded flicker

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perched atop a tall saguaro.

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I saw another one stick
its long bill, then

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its dark-hide head from the
boot of another saguaro, that

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hole the flickers dig out,
waiting months for sap

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to harden so they
might have a nest.

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The gilded flickers
were at home there.

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DNA makes a bird.

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Place makes a bird.

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We make birds.

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We deem the gilded a
subspecies of the northern

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and declare it a species
unto itself twice.

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Metaphor makes a bird.

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Rump, whiteness, cumulus,
chest marked black

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as night inside a cactus,
male are red as paintbrush.

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Suddenly, above the
thorny uplight and uplift

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of saguaros, what made
a gilded flicker was

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the sad, sweet jolt
of 'clear' that

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pierced hot and wavy silence.

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This is the flicker's
contact call,

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the way they find others
of their kind, miles apart.

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It finds me here, in every place
I'll ever hear it or will."

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Excuse me.

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"It finds me here, in every
place I've ever heard it,

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or will.

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What makes a bird, makes me."

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[APPLAUSE]

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