The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.

A Germaine Greer quotation

Gilded Flicker: Have you seen this bird?

Gilded Flicker

The Gilded Flicker (Colaptes chrysoides) is a large-sized woodpecker of the Sonoran, Yuma, and eastern Colorado Desert regions of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This includes all of the Baja Peninsula except the extreme northwestern region.

Golden yellow underwings distinguish the Gilded Flicker from the Northern Flicker found within the same region, which have red underwings.

Identification Tips:
• Length: 10 inches
• Large woodpecker
• Pale brown cap and nape
• Pale gray face, chin, and throat
• Pale brown back and wings barred with black
• Black crescent on upper breast
• Beige breast and belly spotted heavily with black
• White rump (obvious in flight)
• Tail dark above
• Tail and underwings are entirely yellow below, and retricies and primaries have yellow shafts

Adult male:
• Red whisker

Similar species:

Could only be confused with other flickers. The Gilded Flicker has similar wing patterning to Yellow-shafted Flicker, but lacks the red at the rear of the head, has a pale brown cap and pale gray face, a paler brown back, and the male sports a red rather than black whisker. Similarly it differs from Red-shafted Flicker by its paler overall coloration and its yellow underwings and undertail.

The Gilded Flicker most frequently builds its nest hole in a majestic saguaro cactus.

Northern Flickers, on the other hand, nest in riparian trees and very rarely inhabit saguaros.

Gilded Flickers occasionally hybridize with Northern Flickers in the narrow zones where their range and habitat overlap.