This species used to be split into Yellow-shafted and Red-shafted Flickers, two rather different looking species. However the two intergrade along a contact zone stretching from British Columbia to the Midwestern United States. In this "hybrid zone" almost all the birds exhibit a combination of characters as seen here. Notice this male has a mostly black mustache mixed with some red and also shows some red on its nape. The black mustache and red nape are Yellow-shafted traits while the red on the mustache and reddish undertail are Red-shafted traits. We are well south of the hybrid zone here, but birds from the hybrid zone migrate from British Columbia into California and we see small numbers of such birds each year in our area where Red-shafted breeds.
