All species › Woodpeckers and allies › Woodpeckers › Red-stained Woodpecker
Red-stained Woodpecker | Veniliornis affinis
Roodvleugelspecht | Carpintero teñido | Pica-pauzinho-avermelhado
The Red-stained Woodpecker is a small, golden-green woodpecker of Amazonian forest, named for the red spots on its wing coverts. It lives mainly high in the interior of tall forest and often joins mixed canopy flocks. From the ground it is therefore seen less often than the Little Woodpecker of the forest edges.
Voice
A rapid, high series, kee-kee-kee-kee, and single, sharp keek calls. It drums in short bursts.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm, with a straight, dark bill. The upperparts are golden olive-green, the wing coverts with small red spots or a red tinge. The face is olive-brown, with a yellowish to golden nape. The underparts are densely barred dark olive and yellowish white. The male has a red crown, the female a dark olive-brown crown without red.
Confusion species
Little Woodpecker Veniliornis passerinus is slightly smaller and duller olive, without red on the wings and without a yellow nape, and lives mainly along forest edges and rivers. Yellow-vented Woodpecker Veniliornis dignus lives higher in the Andes and has a plain yellow lower belly. Yellow-throated Woodpecker Piculus flavigula and White-throated Woodpecker Piculus leucolaemus are larger, with a plain yellow or white throat and a yellow or red-and-yellow face.
Habitat
Tall humid terra firme lowland forest, also várzea and foothill forest, mainly in the canopy and upper middle levels, from the lowlands to about 1200 m. It searches branches and trunks for insects and larvae, often in mixed flocks. It nests in a self-excavated cavity high in a tree.
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 lowlands east of the Andes, mainly in Amazonia. In Ecuador in the eastern lowlands and foothills. In Peru throughout the Amazonian lowlands. In Bolivia in the lowlands of the north and centre, up to the foot of the Andes. Absent west of the Andes and from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southern Venezuela and Amazonian Brazil, with a separate population in the Atlantic Forest.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
From canopy towers and along clearings in tall forest, search mixed canopy flocks for small woodpeckers. Look for the yellow nape and the red spots on the wing.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a large range, but depends on tall forest and declines where this disappears.
Scientific name
Veniliornis affinis | (Swainson, 1821)
Swainson described the species in 1821 as Picus affinis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Veniliornis was introduced in 1854 by Bonaparte. The genus name combines Venilia, a Roman deity, with Greek ornis, 'bird'. The species name comes from Latin affinis, 'related, allied', for its similarity to related woodpeckers. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bahia, Brazil.