An ornithological mystery has been solved! Puzzling red feathers have been popping up in eastern North America's "yellow-shafted" population of Northern Flickers, but they aren't due to genes borrowed from their "red-shafted" cousins to the west, according to a new study published on October 12, 2016 in The Auk: Ornithological Advances. Instead, the culprit is a pigment that the birds are ingesting in the berries of exotic honeysuckle plants. The article is titled” "Diet Explains Red Flight Feathers in Yellow-Shafted Flickers in Eastern North America." The Northern Flicker comes in two varieties--the birds of the west have a salmon pink or orange tinge to the undersides of their wings, while the eastern birds are yellow. Where the two populations meet in the middle, they frequently hybridize, producing birds with a blend of both colors. For years, however, flickers far to the east of the hybrid zone have been popping up with red-orange wing feathers. The prevailing explanation has been that they must somehow have genes from the western population, but Jocelyn Hudon, Ph.D., of the Royal Alberta Museum and his colleagues have determined that the eastern birds' unusual color actually has a different source: namely, a pigment called rhodoxanthin, which comes from the berries of two species of invasive honeysuckle plants. Dr. Hudon and his colleagues used spectrophotometry and chromatography to show that rhodoxanthin, rather than the type of carotenoid pigment that colors western red-shafted birds, was present in the feathers of yellow-shafted flicker specimens with the aberrant red coloration. Data from a bird-banding station helped confirm that the birds acquire the red pigment during their fall molt about early August, which coincides with the availability of ripe honeysuckle berries.Login Or Register To Read Full Story