Bird ID requested

I know there are a lot of birders on this forum. I can recognize hawks, eagles, owls, ducks, geese, swans, and.... well, that's about it really. Lots of smaller birds look pretty much the same to me. We heard some commotion in our front yard this morning, and when we looked out it looked like a couple of birds were having a bit of a barney. One looked like a blue jay (at least, that's what my wife said). As I was grabbing my R7 with RF 100-400, both birds flew off, but one of them flew into our neighbor's backyard, so I was able to see it from our back patio, and get some shots of it perched on a tree in deep shadow. The camera was set to M with 1/1000 and the maximum aperture of the lens. I should have changed the shutter speed to a slower one, to get a lower ISO, because the bird was just perched (occasionally moving its head), but I was in a hurry. I was quite impressed with the camera's ability to pick out the eye, once I selected the single point focusing area (it was fooled by the branches and leaves when in zone, which is what I was using yesterday). I have it set up so that it looks for eyes within the focus area when I activate tracking, which I do with the AF-ON button. These are pretty heavy crops (pretty much 100%). Can anyone tell me what bird this is?

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Flicker/overview

fredlord wrote:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Flicker/overview

Thanks Fred. So it's actually a kind of woodpecker? I almost said in my OP that I could also recognize woodpeckers! Clearly, I can't.

There are a lot of woodpecker species in Colorado. This one does not have the classical black and white plumage.

Great shots.  One of my favorite birds, but one I have had little success photographing.

You are lucky. They like are very skittish.

I have the 'joy' of photographing them from my balcony as they hammer on the side of my house. I actually put up some CDs for the flash of light to scare them away. There are also a few that hang out in a few of the front yards in my neighborhood. I'd love to have the more skittish variety around me.

HobbesR5 wrote:

A great app to have on your phone is Merlin from Cornel ornithology lab. Very easy to do bird identification, either in the field or at home, just take a picture with the app on your phone of the bird photo displayed on your computer screen or the back screen of the camera.

The thing I like about the Merlin app is that I can turn on Sound ID and get a list of the birds that the app hears.  I then know what to look for.

Shot through a window, but still decent.