I have walked the Cottonwood trail for three days now. The water in the wetlands is as low as I have ever seen it, but today at noon, I counted 15 turtles sunning themselves, all on the same log with their heads pointing East. The Great Blue Heron spread his great wings nearby and then dropped back down behind the rushes. I saw a red winged blackbird. The air is full of the sounds of birds. Above me Carolina Silver Bell (Halisia Carolina) trees are blooming. Along their branches hang white bell like flowers, their four petals gently fused with an orange stamen.
I found a feather on the ground about 5 inches long, a canary yellow, tweety bird yellow vein with black shafts reaching out from it. The underside is the same bright yellow.
In a moment of random willingness, I meet a birder with big binoculars coming my way. He says it is the feather of a Northern Flicker, a type of woodpecker who eats ants and worms on the ground. They are a spectacular bird with a small red moustache, black shafts and speckles and the brilliant yellow feathers on their undersides. They are the state bird of Alabama. There is a story that Confederate Soldiers from a Huntsville unit had uniforms with yellow patches on their sleeves and coattails.
The bird is also called the Yellow Hammer and the Yellow Shafted Flicker. In the West, it is red where in the East, it is yellow.
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