What comes after Red Wing in The Burgess Bird Book? Yellow Wing of course!
Yellow Wing is a Northern Flicker, an absolutely beautiful bird. Thornton W. Burgess describes him like this:
The sides and throat were a soft reddish-tan and on each side at the beginning of the bill was a black patch. The top of the head was gray and just at the back was a little band of bright red…
When his wings were spread, Peter saw that on the under sides they were a beautiful golden-yellow as were the under sides of his tail feathers. Around his throat was a broad, black collar. From this, clear to his tail, were black dots. When his wings were spread, the upper part of his body just above the tail was pure white.
Thornton W. Burgess, The Burgess Bird Book, Living Press Edition, p. 50
Our house is very close to a walking trail along a creek. One day last autumn, we were walking along the path and heard a loud call up in the trees. The leaves had already fallen and it was a little easier to see what was up in the canopy. Low and behold, we spotted our first Northern Flicker! Check out his call:
A few months later I started making my own suet out of yummy nutritious tallow rendered from suet, natural peanut butter, nuts, seeds and dried fruit and guess who showed up at our suet feeder… You got it, the Northern Flicker. I was quite happy that I had lured him into our backyard. Who can resist good suet? You’ll see in the next few posts that we have some very happy birds from the Woodpecker family coming to our backyard daily.
Have you ever spotted a Northern Flicker?!
Until next time, keep your family birding! <3 Kate
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