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Scaled Piculet | Picumnus squamulatus
Geschubde dwergspecht | Carpinterito escamoso | Pica-pau-anão-escamoso
The Scaled Piculet is a piculet of northern Colombia and adjacent Venezuela. Its name refers to the scaled pattern of the back and underparts. It lives mainly in drier forest, forest edges and scrub.
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: Jerome Fischer — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
9 cm, with a short, pointed bill. The upperparts are brownish olive, with dark and pale fringes to the feathers, giving a scaled pattern. 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 feather edges forming a clear scaled pattern. The short tail is black with white stripes. Young birds are more faintly marked.
Confusion species
Chestnut Piculet Picumnus cinnamomeus, in the dry Caribbean coastal region, is largely cinnamon-rufous. Olivaceous Piculet Picumnus olivaceus has a plain olive-green back and a faintly streaked breast without scaling. Greyish Piculet Picumnus granadensis, in western Colombia, is grey with almost unmarked underparts.
Habitat
Dry and semi-humid forest, gallery forest, forest edges, secondary forest, scrub and shade-coffee plantations, from the lowlands to about 1900 m. 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 north and north-east: in the Caribbean lowlands, around the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in the Magdalena Valley and in the Eastern Andes to the edge of the Llanos. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in northern Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search forest edges and shade coffee on the slopes around Minca in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It often joins mixed flocks of small birds.
Conservation status
Not Evaluated. The species is widespread and tolerates secondary forest and shaded plantations.
Scientific name
Picumnus squamulatus | de Lafresnaye, 1854
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1854 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 comes from Latin squamula, 'little scale', thus 'finely scaled', for the scaly markings. The specimen the first description was based on came from Colombia.