The Northern Flicker - how to tell the female and male apart.

I have bird watched for many years but admittedly am still perplexed in identifying species and sexes within a species. One of the reasons I enjoy photographing birds is to learn about their many differences. One that I commonly come across is the Norther Flicker; although I only ever call them Flickers. Is there even such a thing as a "Southern Flicker"? I don't think so - I looked it up on this website and got no hits.

I have only recently become confident in determining the male from the female; the black mustache used to confuse me in photos until I discovered the birds sporting it were yellow-shafted males. So, if the flicker has no mustache at all, it is a female. If the mustache is red, it is a red-shafted flicker. If the mustache is black, it is a yellow-shafted flicker. How, then, do you tell if the female is a yellow or red-shafted one? By looking at the underwing colour and undertail colour. You can guess which colour each one will be.

There is another bird called the Gilded Flicker. It looks a lot like the Yellow-shafted form except it has a rusty cap instead of the gray one our flickers have. They also are fond of dry south-west locations and we (I think) do not have any here in Canada. Is it possible that the Gilded flicker is the Southern Flicker? That, my friends, is the subject of another blog.

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen