All species › Woodpeckers and allies › Woodpeckers › Lafresnaye's Piculet
Lafresnaye's Piculet | Picumnus lafresnayi
Lafresnayes dwergspecht | Carpinterito de Lafresnaye | Pica-pau-anão-de-lafresnaye
Lafresnaye's Piculet is the piculet of the western Amazonian lowlands north of the Amazon, from south-eastern Colombia to north-eastern Peru. It is more often found along forest edges and in secondary forest than in tall, closed forest. The species is named after the French ornithologist Frédéric de Lafresnaye.
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: Mauricio Cuellar Ramirez (@Birding.travel) — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
9 cm, with a short, pointed bill. The upperparts are olive-green with narrow yellow and dark bars. 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 yellowish white with dense black barring. The short black tail has white inner webs on the central feathers. Young birds are duller and more faintly barred.
Confusion species
Bar-breasted Piculet Picumnus aurifrons, mainly south of the Amazon, has a plain olive-green back and less heavily barred underparts. Orinoco Piculet Picumnus pumilus, in eastern Colombia, also has a plain back. Plain-breasted Piculet Picumnus castelnau lives in várzea and on river islands and has almost unmarked whitish underparts. Rufous-breasted Piculet Picumnus rufiventris is larger, with rufous underparts.
Habitat
Forest edges, secondary forest, clearings with scattered trees, gardens and plantations and the edges of humid lowland forest, from the lowlands up to about 1200 m in the foothills. 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
In Colombia in the south-east, in the lowlands and foothills of Putumayo, Caquetá and Amazonas among other departments. In Ecuador in the eastern lowlands and foothills. In Peru in the north-east, mainly north of the Amazon and the Marañón. Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in adjacent north-western Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In eastern Ecuador search roadsides and forest edges in the lowlands and foothills, for example along the Napo, and in Putumayo in Colombia. It often joins mixed flocks of small birds in low trees and vines.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species tolerates clearings and secondary forest.
Scientific name
Picumnus lafresnayi | Malherbe, 1862
Malherbe described the species in 1862 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. 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 honours Frédéric de Lafresnaye (1783–1861), a French ornithologist and collector. The specimen the first description was based on came from Ecuador.