A new visitor in the neighborhood

As I was passing the living room window on the way to the kitchen tonight I caught some motion in my peripheral vision of a larger bird with wings spread, landing, definite yellow showing through the feathers as the sun hit them. I immediately suspected a flicker, a species I have never seen before.

Immediately I knew this was something different and I ducked down crawled over to where my camera was ready. I slowly rose to see my initial guess had been right, a flicker was dipping into the water in the bird bath. I managed six shots and two of them are close to being in focus. Although I enjoy the birds tremendously, I seldom get excited about seeing one, but a new one is special, especially such a colorful one.

It took a while to figure out exactly what it was. I usually use the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America and at first the citation was confusing. According to the illustration this one is a yellow-shafted woodpecker. But there were no words for that particular bird. I googled it and got northern flicker. Going deeper it turns out some time ago three variations of flicker were combined into the catch-all northern flicker. Each of the three has slightly different markings but they are considered one species. So it goes.

Mostly I am just happy to see a new species and such a colorful one at that.