Gilded Flicker

My prior two posts have dealt with woodpeckers I saw because my son, Sam, had directed me to where he'd found them. Prior to those woodpecker, in February of this year, he expressed an interest in going to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, where we have been previously several times, to see the Gila woodpecker and the gilded flicker. I'd seen the Gila woodpecker before (April 15, 2017), but I'd never even heard of the gilded woodpecker. Sam's interest in woodpeckers has opened up a whole world of woodpeckers I've known nothing about, and the gilded woodpecker is one of them. We discovered that the visitor center has put in a small warm spring and trees behind it which is a little oasis to attract birds. I mostly sat near the oasis waiting for birds to come, while Sam did a little of that, but also roamed beyond. He saw several gilded woodpeckers in his roaming and I saw one right as we were about ready to leave, standing on top of a large saguaro cactus near the spring. It later flew to another saguaro and I got some nice photos. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. The female does not have the red moustache. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World, with the red moustache. 

Yellow underwings is a key distinguishing feature of the gilded flicker from the northern flicker which has red underwings. The gilded flicker also has a rustier crown, narrower dorsal barring, a rounder breast patch and a wider black tip on the underside of the tail. The northern flicker also has a black moustache, instead of red and a red cap on the back of the head.  

This is an illustration of the northern flicker from Birds of the World. 

Wikipedia notes four subspecies and we saw the Mearns' gilded flicker (mearnsi) which is found in extreme southeastern California, to Arizona and northwestern Mexico. The population in the U.S. has declined by about 54% from 1970 to 2014 and not much is known about it. 

Range of the gilded flicker from Birds of the World.