These are a part of the woodpecker family. I also find they like the chickadee get added into a lot of media where a 'woodsy' sound is wanted. They are fairly common, so their calls are fairly familiar to us. Like a lot of woodpeckers, like these guys enjoy ants. This one was tearing into an ant hill eating ants off of an ant hill that was adjacent to a high traffic trail. A lot of woodpeckers actually tear into this ant hill as well. I was nearly hit by a fleeing Pillated Woodpecker taking flight from this same hill two years earlier. Its common to find a western and an eastern version of a bird. This one is a yellow shafted Flickr, as you can see the yellow showing at the edges of its wing. There is a Red Shafted out west, that would have red there instead of yellow. There are also other marks, but they are not as visible from this angle.
