The official State bird of Alabama, United States is Colaptes auratus. Locally, this bird is called a “Yellowhammer.” This leads to extensive confusion with the Eurasian yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella). Often resources will provide C. auratus pictures, but use a cartoon or illustrated E. citrinel…

I have no idea how to fix any of it. Those two species do not look alike. Alabama has their own reason for calling their state bird “Yellowhammer”, where here in Michigan, I’ve only heard it called “Yellow-shafted Flicker”, “Yellow Flicker” or just “Flicker”. I’ve never seen a Red-Shafted Flicker…

[image] eh111: What can be done to fix this confusion? (particularly to remove it from state sponsored educational materials) In this case, you’d need to write to those producing the materials. In the longer term, a basic level of ecological literacy would help to reduce this confusion. It b…

How about change the state bird? Few will like it, but I don’t know.

Start a campaign that shows the difference between the two species and explains which one actually occurs in AL. Great opportunity to educate the public that they actually have a state bird and it’s not the one illustrated in all these websites.

Here in California, many people either don’t realize that our state animal, the Golden Bear, is meant to depict a California Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos californicus) or don’t know that this subspecies was driven to extinction, and that there are no longer any wild Grizzly Bears in California. I’ve t…

Great suggestions. I added two more links to the original post.

The Yellowhammer Problem

Nature Talk

jnstuart May 21, 2025, 11:47pm 6

If anyone reads newspapers anymore, find a reporter in AL who can do a story on this. Then disseminate the article to publishers, interested parties, and anyone else via social media. Surely AL has an Audubon Society chapter that could help.

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The Yellowhammer Problem

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