The Yellowhammer - Our State Bird

One day my wife Kay and I had an interesting revelation. We have lived in Alabama our entire lives and we both enjoy watching birds of all types. We realized we had never seen our state bird. It started like this, "Kay, have you ever seen a yellowhammer?", to which she replied, "I don't think I have, Have you? What does it look like?" Well, this happens to be our state bird and even the University of Alabama has a cheer based on this elusive bird. We both agreed we had never seen this rare and special bird. An investigation had begun!

What we ran into next was, well, confusing. All we had was a state official drawing of our bird. When we found an official Yellowhammer picture, it looked nothing like this or other state drawings. Imagine our confusion when a small, very pretty yellow finch was found having this name. It was called Old World Yellowhammer, but surely the bird hadn't changed that much! Comparing this bird to our official state pictures - they could not be the same. Back to digging we went.

This time we read the history of how the yellowhammer became our state bird. It was during the Civil War that a group of soldiers from Alabama arrived with fresh uniforms that had bright yellow insignias. They were jokingly called Flicker Flicker - Yellowhammer. The name stuck for most Alabama soldiers after that. We now had a hint -Flicker. Our state bird is a type of Flicker. A woodpecker.

It turns out, Yellowhammer continues to be a nickname. There is no such bird officially. There is the Yellow Shafted Flicker also known as the Northern Flicker. It is found from Maine to Florida and yes - in all parts of Alabama. What we thought of as a rare and special bird, is really quite common. We enjoyed our searching, but came to find this bird was what we had always called a woodpecker! This woodpecker is a little different. If you sometimes see a group of three or four birds similar to robins from a distance, hopping around and eating on the ground, they could be the Yellowhammer. A favorite food for these woodpeckers are ants. And yes, it turns out, we had been seeing our state bird all our lives!

David Price is an avid amateur bird watcher and outdoor photographer. Related birding information, festival schedules, pictures, products, and stories can be found at http://www.fancyflyers.com under Bird Tales

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