An interesting thing about flickers is that they often feed on the ground. They love ants, and you can find them hopping around a yard, looking for these insects. They have a distinctive white area on their upper tail, very visible when they fly away from you, which is helpful in identifying them - especially when they are flying away from you. They are common in the suburbs and in open woods, and in our area, are year-round dwellers, though some observers think populations of them move southward in winter. Thus, our wintering flickers may be from northern New England and Canada, while our summering ones may have come up from the South.
Flickers are among the birds suffering from nomenclaturitis.
Their names keep changing in the scientific and field guide publishing communities. Some call them northern flickers. Others call them yellow flickers. I like the hairy wicket, myself. We found this item in the rec.birds newsgroup on the Internet the other day.