All species › Woodpeckers and allies › Woodpeckers › Speckle-chested Piculet
Speckle-chested Piculet | Picumnus steindachneri
Spikkelborstdwergspecht | Carpinterito perlado | Pica-pau-anão-de-peito-pintado
The Speckle-chested Piculet is a piculet found only in northern Peru, in the valleys of the Utcubamba, the Alto Mayo and the upper Huallaga. It has a black breast densely spotted with white, a pattern no other piculet in the guide area shows. Because of deforestation within its small range it is classed as Near Threatened.
Voice
A high, rapid, slightly descending trill, tsirrrr, and single thin tsit calls. It drums softly on thin branches.
Recording: Jerome Fischer — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
10 cm, with a short, straight bill and a short, soft tail. The crown is black with white dots; the male also has red feather tips on the forecrown. The upperparts are almost plain greyish brown. The throat and breast are black with dense white drop-shaped spots, and the belly is white with black bars. The tail is black, with white inner webs to the central feathers. The female lacks the red on the head.
Confusion species
Lafresnaye's Piculet Picumnus lafresnayi, lower on the eastern slope, is more olive-green above and fully barred below, without a black breast. Bar-breasted Piculet Picumnus aurifrons of the lowlands is smaller, with a greenish back and, in the male, a yellow forecrown. Ocellated Piculet Picumnus dorbignyanus, further south, is white below with black scaling and lacks the black breast.
Habitat
Humid montane forest, forest edges, secondary forest and scrub with scattered trees, also shade coffee, roughly between 1000 and 2200 m. It forages on thin branches, vines and stems in the lower and middle strata, often with mixed flocks. It eats small insects, ants and larvae, which it chisels out of dead twigs. It nests in a self-excavated cavity in a thin dead branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Only in Peru: in the north, in the departments of Amazonas and San Martín, in the valleys of the Utcubamba, the Alto Mayo and the upper Huallaga. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Endemic to the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search forest edges and scrub along the road through the Alto Mayo region, between Abra Patricia and Moyobamba, in mixed flocks. Listen for soft tapping in thin branches.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. Its small range lies in a region where forest is rapidly giving way to farmland, coffee and pasture; the species does tolerate secondary forest and forest edges.
Scientific name
Picumnus steindachneri | Taczanowski, 1882
Taczanowski described the species in 1882 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 Franz Steindachner (1834–1919), an Austrian zoologist and ichthyologist at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. The specimen the first description was based on came from Chirimoto, Amazonas, Peru.