On a recent early morning trip to Bass Lake Park in Holly Springs NC, I spotted a gorgeous female Northern Flicker sleeping up in the trees.
Clinging to a thin shaded branch above my head, the bird hardly moved. I stood there for about 15 minutes waiting for her to at least turn her head towards the sun so I could try and get a clean shot or two.
Finally she woke up and started preening!
This gave me a nice opportunity to take a couple photos before she flew off in search of breakfast.
Northern Flicker is a familiar backyard bird here in N.C., throughout the United States and even in areas of southern Canada. Within this large home range, it occurs in two distinct different color forms, “Red-shafted Flicker” in the west, “Yellow-shafted Flicker” in the east.
Although there are some differences in their facial patterns, the easiest way to quickly tell them apart is found by observing the color of the large feathers of the wings and tail, either red or yellow, respectively.
As with the case with many species of birds, these gorgeous bright red and yellow colors in their feathers are produced by carotenoid pigments.
The carotenoids come from the bird’s diet of fruit and berries. The variances in the bird’s color results from a difference in the way each bird within a regional population of Flickers metabolizes those carotenoids to produce the red or yellow color pigments.
This means that given the same diet, an eastern flicker will produce yellow feathers, a western flicker will produce red feathers, and an intergrade flicker orange feathers.
Cool huh?
Photos by @sally_siko of @birdwatching_nc on the mighty 50 megapixel beast, the @canonusa
#5Ds
