Joanne Powell wrote:

>The third had the red mustaches and, at first, I thought it was the adult
>male although it seemed somewhat smaller than I remember him. Then he
>hopped around so that his back was to me and he had a red chevron shaped
>mark on the back of his head. I have never seen this and when I checked my
>three field guides they all said only yellow-shafted had a red mark on
>their nape.

I've recently re-subscribed to tweeters (digest version, so I apologize if
this is late). The last time I lived in the area, a few years ago, I ran
into a similar question while birding in the Montlake Fill -- the mystery of
the red mustache with red nape patch or black mustache with no nape patch,
not to mention the varying degrees of redness or yellowness in the wings.
The thread that followed my question posted to tweeters was infinitely
useful and interesting to me. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce it, but to
sum up: flickers from west to east are basically a continuum from
red-shafted to yellow-shafted (with orange in the middle!), and although in
the past the two have been considered separate species, they are now
considered to be one (although the Southwest's gilded flicker is still
considered a separate species, at least last time I checked). This means
that at least for the moment the Northern flicker variation isn't a matter
of hybridization bewteen species, but rather the blending of different gene
pools within one (currently recognized) species. In other words, typical
yellow-shafted flickers have yellow wings and red mustaches and black nape
patches, and typical red-shafted flickers have red wings and black mustaches
and no nape patches. You can tell a bit about a bird's lineage by the
degree to which it displays typical markings. After I drank of the wisdom
imparted on tweeters, I found flicker watching to be a continuously
fascinating passtime, since you never know which set of markings an
individual might have.

I'm writing this off the top of my head, and not being an expert on the
subject, I can't tell you things like percentages of Northwest birds which
have one set of markings over another, or the average shade (hue?) of red in
our local populations. I also don't know if Joanne Powell's abberation
could have something to do with juvenal plumage, although I doubt it. But
I'd be interested to hear more about this if any of you science types have
ideas, hypotheses or hard cold facts.

Variation among flickers is a wonderful thing for beginning to intermediate
birders to look for: it's relatively simple to figure out, encourages closer
attention to plumage details, and can bring great satisfaction. Start with
flickers, then move on to carpodacus finches or empidonax flycatchers.

Hopefully,

Katie Sauter
sauter at igc.org

PS. I, too, hope that Paul Cozens will reconsider posting the Seattle RBA to
tweeters...