It has a long straight head plume instead of the pompadour of the California Quail. Its chestnut throat patch is lined by greenish white. Its chestnut sides have long white lines on them. Its chest is brown and gray and it has a very short tail. Juveniles have shorter head plumes and a white chin.

The Northern Flicker is rewardingly easy to identify with its undulating flight and its white rump patch and flashes of salmon-red on its wings and tail. This woodpecker is divided into our west-coast red-shafted flicker and the east and far-north yellow-shafted flicker. In the Great Plains you get some interesting mixes of the two.

The Peregrine Falcon is the namesake for the inland Audubon group. David Allen Sibley calls this bird the embodiment of speed and power.

The scientific binomial for Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps, is Latin for ‘diving rump foot.’ It’s a fitting description of the small bird’s legs and feet, which are attached toward the back of its body.

Pelagic Cormorants do not live up to their names. Rather than going far out in the open ocean, they stay within a few miles of shore.