Listen for "KeeeRick" to find the Northern Flicker
image courtesy of Randy Smith
Thinking back to one of my college wildlife biology classes, Ornithology, I distinctly remember my professor pointing out the white rump patch on a Northern Flicker and asking the class why this bird and others have evolved to carry white patches of feathers towards their lower back or tail feathers.
A few suggested it was to attract a mate during courtship, but one student compared it to the white rump patch on an American pronghorn antelope and said it is to focus a predator’s attempt to catch prey on an area that is less vital. A swipe of a talon from a hungry sharp-shinned hawk across a rump patch of white rear plumage might just offer that Flicker another day of survival.