A curious heron looks over a possible meal: Two juvenile flickers.

Flickers have the widest range of all our woodpeckers and are the most conspicuous; so it's not surprising that many people take notice of them. Frank Chapman (Birds of Eastern North America) calls them a "bird of character" and reports that people throughout the country have given them no less then thirty-six aliases.

Although they could not be labeled "friendly" towards people, flickers are nonetheless tolerant of us, are adapting to our modifications to the landscape, and seem to be holding their own better than other members of their tribe.

One flicker nick-name is "high-hole" a reference to their need for secure and isolated nest sites, usually out of view of people; but this year I discovered a pair that is exceptionally tolerant of fishermen, and perhaps a bit smarter and more adaptable than the average flicker.

On my early morning forays to the Atlantic Highlands Marina, on the Raritan Bay shoreline of Monmouth County, NJ, a large and bustling fishing port, I regularly observed a flicker sitting on an isolated piling doing its territorial "flicka-flicka-flicka" call. Flickers are a fairly excitable bird and tend to bound off at the first sign of trouble, so it was a surprise to see it in the midst of so much commotion at the harbor as exuberant fisherman jostled for space on the party boats.

I was also puzzled by the immensity of the territory this one was claiming since it was presumably calling from the fringe of that province. The piling it staked out is about fifty yards from the shore and hundreds of yards from any suitable nesting trees.

By mid-summer the mystery was solved when two youngsters fledged from a nesting cavity the parents had hacked into the seaward side of the piling. The hole was not visible from the dock, but eye-level to, and within a yard of, the faces of hundreds of fisherman, who in June and July had boarded the party boat that was secured to the piling. Like their neighbors at the wharf, the barn swallows and starlings, these adaptable birds have found a unique and secure home for their nestlings that is immune to predation from land creatures.

It will be interesting to see whether these waterfront woodpeckers choose a similar location next year.

NOTE: Dave Grant is the Society's Chief Naturalist and on the faculty of Brookdale Community College here at Sandy Hook. He has written widely in this, journal. The artwork is by Sue Draxler; a naturalist at Huber Woods; part of the Monmouth County Parks System, and a frequent illustrator in UNDERWATER NATURALIST