Looking in the grass

About a half-hour after dawn on Friday I spotted a pair of flickers on the edge of the sidewalk ahead of me, intently poking around in the grass along the edging. A mockingbird was hanging around them, watching. As I pulled out my camera, the female flicker flew off into the trees a few yards away, but the male stayed where he was, totally focused on whatever it was he had found. He kept working on the one spot, ignoring me and ignoring the mockingbird, too, even when that fellow came right up next to him, walking around and giving the impression that he'd like to run the bigger bird away. I kept shooting, they kept ignoring me, and then a coworker came up behind me. She walked around me, and then paused, seeing the birds. But two people were enough to make the flicker move across the sidewalk and then follow his mate up into the trees. The mockingbird sailed up onto the fence and watched us head off to work, then dropped back onto the sidewalk to pursue his own daily bugs...