Sometimes people call the red extensions at the edge of the eclipsed sun (peeking out from behind the moon) as "flares" but they are really just prominences, material flung out from the Sun. The prominences are red because they contain a lot of Hydrogen.
You can see some great eclipse pictures from the China eclipse that has prominences near the "3 o'clock" position at:
http://www.eclipsetours.com/cresults.html
You can see prominences any day using a Hydrogen-alpha filter.
You can see today's h-alpha image by going to
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/spaceweather/
and choosing "H-Alpha Full Disk ... from Kanelhohe"
but if the Sun is really quiet, like now, you won't see many prominences.