BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
THE YELLOWHAMMER
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
If there are any British readers amongst you, you are probably saying, "I know this bird and it has nothing to do with Nantucket." The bird you are thinking about is a sparrowlike bird with a lot of yellow on it. It's a year-around bird in most of Europe and, no, it is not our Yellowhammer.

Yellowhammer

Our Yellowhammer is actually a big, brown woodpecker. Its official name is now the Northern Flicker. When I was learning my birds it was the Yellow-shafted Flicker, giving me a clue to the yellow part of "Yellowhammer." Out west there was a Red-shafted Flicker and right now they are considered to be one species. Where the two populations meet, there are flickers with orange shafts. How about that? The shafts we are talking about are the feathers seen in the underwings and tail. You see them when flickers fly over - very striking.

Flickers are just over 12 inches from beak to tail and appear chunky and round-shouldered. Quite often they are found on the ground, hopping around with robins. An amazing portion of their diet is ants and if they find any sort of anthill they go right to town, licking those acidic little guys right up. Looking from the rear your first thought might be, "There's a different looking robin." But as your bird flies away a huge white patch on the lower back above the tail strikes you. This is an area birders learn to call the 'rump.' With binoculars, the assortment of field marks can overwhelm you - a tan belly with big black polka-dots; a thick black bar across the throat; a red crescent across the back of the grey head; and the brown back has horizontal black bars - too much information! Male Northern Flickers sport a black mustache. With a flash of yellow your bird swoops up to the side of a telephone pole and sticks there like Velcro. Okay, now it looks like a woodpecker.

There are 180 species of woodpeckers around the world and six you may find on Nantucket each year, including the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Woodpeckers all have zygotactyl feet. Sounds like something you might visit a podiatrist for, doesn't it? But no, it means having two toes pointing to the front and two to the rear. If this is your problem, the doctor probably can't help you! There are three-toed woodpeckers but let's not go there.

Woodpeckers have specially reinforced tail feathers they use to prop themselves up vertically on the side of a tree. Their tongues curl inside around the back of their heads to store extra length for probing insects out of trees and their heads are actually designed in a unique way to keep them from bashing their brains out, banging away on hard wood! What a marvelous creature this is and you can see them most any day on Nantucket.

Down south is where the Yellowhammer nickname is mostly used and it is the state bird of Alabama. During the Civil War, a new troop of Alabama soldiers arrived with fresh new uniforms adorned with bits of brilliant yellow cloth. When the old veterans saw them, a chant of "Yellowhammers, Yellowhammers, flicker, flicker" broke out and soon any soldier from Alabama went by that nickname.

The scientific name for the Northern Flicker is Colaptes auratus, translating to 'golden pecker.' Interestingly, when our western flickers were their own species, their name was Colaptes cafer. The specimen that the German scientist, Johann Gmelin used for naming was from the Bay of Good Hope, near Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Somehow he confused this with the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and gave the bird its species name 'cafer,' referring to what is now an ethnic slur in South Africa, 'kaffir.' The name of that bird has always been an embarrassment for ornithologists, because of the geographical error and also for being very politically incorrect.

Northern Flickers are the most migratory of our woodpecker species. Still, you may find them on our island 12 months a year. Our winter flickers spend their summers up in northern Canada. We've found as many as 253 of them on a Christmas Bird Count.

Despite these numbers this species

seems to be declining. One reason is continued competition with starlings for nesting holes. Starlings are aggressive, alien invaders from Europe whose strategy it is to take over someone else's nesting cavity. Man is also not helping these fascinating big woodpeckers. Our penchant for green, insect free lawns causes us to pepper the surface with insecticide. This reduces the number of ants and doesn't do Northern Flicker digestion any good either.

The good news is that now is one of the best times to see these woodpeckers as they migrate over our island. Watch for flashes of yellow, white rumps, and listen for their 'wicka wicka' calls, often reminding you of Tarzan of the jungle.

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles. If you enjoy 'social' birding, join the Nantucket Bird Club at 8 a.m. Sundays in front of Nantucket High School for a two to three hour birding trip. Call 228-1693 for more information. To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259-8805. Ask Ken a question at: kenandcindy1@comcast.net.