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Arrowhead Piculet | Picumnus minutissimus
Guyanadwergspecht | Carpinterito de Guayana | Pica-pau-anão-da-guiana
The Arrowhead Piculet is a piculet of the coastal plain of the Guianas. It does not occur in the guide area; the records on the map lie in Guyana, at the eastern edge of the map. It lives in mangroves, coastal woodland, gardens and plantations.
Voice
A high, thin, rapid trill, often slightly descending, and short, sharp tsit calls. Drums softly and briefly on thin twigs; a soft tapping is often heard while it feeds.
Recording: Jon King — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
10 cm, with a short, pointed bill. The upperparts are brown, with small pale, dark-edged spots. The crown is black; in the male with red dots on the forecrown and white ones behind, in the female with white dots only. The underparts are whitish, with black arrowhead-shaped spots and scales that give it its name. The short tail is black with white stripes.
Confusion species
White-bellied Piculet Picumnus spilogaster, also on the coastal plain, has an almost unmarked greyish-brown back and white underparts with finer spots. Golden-spangled Piculet Picumnus exilis, further inland, has an olive-green back with yellow spangles and yellowish, barred underparts.
Habitat
Mangroves, coastal woodland, forest edges, secondary forest, plantations and gardens on the coastal plain, in the lowlands. It searches thin twigs, vines and dead wood for ants, termites and their larvae and eggs. The nest is a small cavity it excavates in a thin dead branch or trunk.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Does not occur in the guide area: not recorded in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia or the Galápagos. The range lies on the coastal plain of Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Not to be expected in the guide area. On the coastal plain of Suriname and Guyana it is often found in gardens, yards and mangroves, also in and around towns.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species tolerates man-made landscapes and also occurs in gardens.
Scientific name
Picumnus minutissimus | (Pallas, 1782)
Pallas described the species in 1782 as Picus minutissimus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Picumnus was introduced in 1825 by Temminck. The genus name refers to Picumnus, a Roman god of fertility and agriculture, brother of Pilumnus, whose name is related to Latin picus, 'woodpecker'. The species name comes from Latin minutissimus, 'very small', superlative of minutus. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.