Subject: Re: Northern Flicker
Date: Sep 23 08:48:35 1996
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at mirrors.ups.edu


>All this flicker talk reminded me of a walk in the Montlake Fill about
>three years ago where I saw what appeared to be a yellow-shafted flicker.
>The red was definitely on the nape of the neck. I was curious how many
>other birders out there have seen any yellow-shafted, or perhaps hybrid
>flickers in Washington?
>
>wjansen

At the risk of repeating someone else (I've just started on Monday morning
through my stack of e-mail messages), I'll respond to Wes's question with
another question. What else about the bird told you it was a
yellow-shafted? The red nape is actually not a good field mark for a
yellow-shafted, as many birds that otherwise look like pure red-shafted
have red on the nape, even some breeding birds in this area. That
characteristic seems to have spread widely through "red-shafted"
populations.

Lots of our flickers are intermediates. For a "pure" yellow-shafted, you
should see yellow under the flight feathers and tail, a black malar stripe
if a male, and the typical head color of a yellow-shafted--gray above and
rich light brown or buff below.

To answer the question, I see intermediates (we shouldn't call them
hybrids, as they don't represent the interbreeding of two species)
regularly but pure yellow-shafted only occasionally. The best place to
look for them is the outer coast. I think if you check out the flickers at
Ocean Shores in the winter, you can always find a yellow-shafted.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416