Beautiful woodpecker

Beautiful woodpecker
Adult male (foreground, above) and female (background, below)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Piciformes
Family: Picidae
Genus: Melanerpes
Species: M. pulcher
Binomial name
Melanerpes pulcher
(Sclater, 1870)

The beautiful woodpecker (Melanerpes pulcher) is a bird species in the woodpecker family (Picidae). It is endemic to Colombia.

Until recently, it was united with the golden-naped woodpecker (M. chrysauchen) of Central America as subspecies. But the different appearance and allopatric ranges argue in favor of recognizing the two as distinct species. According to "Birds of Northern South America" by Robin Restall the back is barred and the belly and breast are white, but that appears to be in error based on photos of the birds in Colombia.

Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and heavily degraded former forest.

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/24/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.