Yellow-shafted Flicker

Yellow-shafted Flicker, Colaptes (auratus) auratus
Red-shafted Flicker, Colaptes (auratus) cafer
Guadalupe Flicker, Colaptes auratus/cafer rufipileus - extinct (c.1910) ...

The yellow-shafted flicker has a red patch on its neck and yellow feathers on the inside of its wings. The male has a black mustache. Yellow-shafted flickers can be found in the east and the north.

The Yellow-shafted Flicker resides in eastern North America. They are yellow under the tail and underwings and have yellow shafts on their primaries. They have a grey cap, a beige face and a red bar at the nape of their neck.

The yellow-shafted flicker has a red patch on the nape of the neck. They have a gray crown. Under the tail and wings, a bright yellow can be seen giving the flicker the name yellow-shafted.

Alabama - Yellowhammer (Yellow-shafted flicker)
Alaska - Willow ptarmigan
Arizona - Cactus wren
Arkansas - Mockingbird
California - California valley quail (Lophortyx californica)
Colorado - Prairie Lark-Finch
Connecticut - Robin ...

Distribution The "yellow-shafted flicker" (yellow under wings) migrates from Alaska to Nicaragua. In parts of Texas, they are year-round residents. The "red-shafted flicker" (red under wings) migrates shorter distances.

Our subspecies is the "Yellow-shafted Flicker" (auratus subspecies group).

Yellow-shafted Flicker is currently considered the same species but is easily identified by the yellow undersurface to its tail and flight feathers, its red mark at the rear of the head, and its gray crown and tan face.

The Yellow-shafted Flicker is generally more eastern in distribution and the Red-shafted more western. The red-shafted Northern Flicker in the image shown here was at Bosque del Apache N. W. R., Socorro Co., New Mexico, in December, 1999.

In the 1960s, taxonomists grouped the Gilded Flicker with the Red-shafted and Yellow-shafted flickers as a single species, the Northern Flicker, in recognition of the extensive interbreeding of the forms.

Migrating birds have few choices of where to go and when the wind is just right, the grove can be full of warblers. Some mornings I found nothing but resident birds here: Yellow-shafted Flicker nesting in a dead tree, Northern Orioles, ...

The yellow-shafted flicker is known by many local names (e.g., high hole and yellowhammer) and interbreeds with the red-shafted flicker.

See also: Flicker, Woodpecker, Red-shafted Flicker, Northern Flicker, Yellowhammer