A Flying Squirrel, on the hunt for a nut-stash, attacks a Northern Flicker (woodpecker) in a nest box on Christmas Eve. The whole event lasts 30 seconds.  Neither is permanently harmed, although the video is painful to watch.

This male Northern Flicker had been “roosting” (spending nights) in this box almost every night since mid-October.  He would typically arrive just before dark and quickly settle in to sleep until full-daylight.  It became part of my fall/winter routine — to check on him, as mom’s do, to make sure he had come home for the night — and sometimes later in the evening to make sure he was doing okay.  Christmas Eve of 2015, I had checked on him just after dark — and then checked in again about 7:30pm.  (I am, indeed, incurable!)  When I saw he was gone, I played back the recorded video to see why.

Flying Squirrels often enter nest boxes in the winter to hunt for acorns and other nuts that may have been stashed there by feathered or fuzzy things.  In the original full-length video, the Flying Squirrel thoroughly digs through the wood shavings hunting for this stash.  He ultimately leaves empty-bellied.

While I don’t like witnessing attacks, I have to admire the squirrel’s ability to keep himself out of reach of the Flicker’s pretty impressive beak.

Neither the Flicker nor the Flying Squirrel returned to the box.  I assumed this particular Flicker would NEVER spend the night in a box again.  While I can’t say for sure it is the same Flicker, I was elated to enjoy the company of a male Flicker the next fall … from mid-October 2016 until late-March 2017.

This same video has also been saved in a slow-motion format (5o% frame rate).  It is available here.