We’re currently in Baltimore doing some research and visiting friends. The other day, while i was in a bar with some friends of mine, my wife called and told me she had found a bird that appeared to be in distress. I told her that she should just leave it, but she ignored me (like i knew she would) and finally tracked down an animal rescue person. Delivering the bird to this woman involved a 50-mile round trip into the middle of nowhere, which annoyed the hell out of me.
Anyway, the rescue woman had told us she wouldn’t be home, but had left a crate for us to leave the bird in. before we left it, my wife got me to take some pictures, and we were wondering whether anyone could identify it. As i said, we’re in Baltimore, so i assume it’s something native to the area.
Could it be another kind of jay? I was looking at some pics and this one doesn’t look blue enough? I was just Googling around though, but I was thinking some other kind of jay. Maybe this one will grow blue into it
Well, my wife got a call from the bird rescue lady with an update yesterday. Apparently the bird is doing well, and was only a couple of hours away from snuffing it when my wife rescued it.
And if the bird rescue woman knows her birds, it appears that the blue jay conclusion was actually incorrect. According to her, it’s a Northern Flicker, or Yellow-Shafted Flicker, a member of the woodpecker family.
While Broomstick is right that many young birds have a general fuzzy gray color about them, this one did appear to have the beginnings of the red cap at the back of the head that is evident in some of the pictures of the birds on the Wiki page.
I would also note that from the photo it appears to have two toes in front, not three. Woodpeckers have two toes forward and two back, unlike most birds (including jays) which have three forward and one back.
Besides the incipient red patch on the back of the head, the wing feathers that are just coming in have brown and black barring, like those of a flicker.
