One day Kay and I had an interesting revelation. We have lived in Alabama our entire lives and never seen our state bird. It started like this, "Kay, have you seen a yellowhammer?" to which she replied, "I don't think I have, what is a yellowhammer?" Well, the yellowhammer is our state bird and even the University of Alabama has a cheer based on the yellowhammer. We both agreed we had never seen this bird. An investigation had begun!
Obviously, this could not be the same bird. Back to digging we went. This time we read the history of how this bird became our state bird. It was during the Civil War that a group of soldiers from Alabama arrived with fresh uniforms that had bright yellow insignias. They were jokingly called Flicker Flicker - Yellowhammer. The name stuck for most Alabama soldiers after that. We now had a hint - Flicker. Our state bird is a type of Flicker. Turns out, the Yellowhammer continues to be a nickname. There is no such bird officially. There is the Yellow Shafted Flicker also known as the Northern Flicker. It is found from Maine to Florida and yes - in all parts of Alabama. What we thought of as a rare and special bird, is really quite common. We enjoyed our searching, but came to find this bird was what we had always called a - woodpecker! And yes, it turns out, we had been seeing the Yellowhammer all our lives!
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What we ran into next was - well - confusing. All we had was this state "official" drawing of our bird. But, when we found the Yellowhammer, it looked nothing like this or other state drawings. Imagine our confusion when this pretty yellow finch was found having the name "Yellowhammer." It was called Old World Yellowhammer, but surely the bird hadn't changed that much! Compare this bird to the drawing above. 
