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White-wedged Piculet | Picumnus albosquamatus
Witschubdwergspecht | Carpinterito albiescamoso | Pica-pau-anão-escamado
The White-wedged Piculet is a piculet of open dry forest and savanna in eastern Bolivia and interior Brazil. Its underparts are white with black scales and wedge-shaped spots, to which its English name refers. In the guide area it occurs only in Bolivia.
Voice
A high, rapid trill and sharp single tsik calls. It drums briefly on dead twigs.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, with a short, straight bill. The crown is black with white dots; the male has red feather tips on the forecrown. The upperparts are brown to greyish brown. The underparts are white, with black feather edges forming a scaled pattern on the throat and breast and becoming more spotted or barred on the belly; the amount of marking varies by subspecies. The tail is black, with white inner webs to the central feathers. The female has no red on the head.
Confusion species
White-barred Piculet Picumnus cirratus is evenly barred black and white below. Ocellated Piculet Picumnus dorbignyanus is very similar but lives higher, in humid montane forest of the Andes. Rusty-necked Piculet Picumnus fuscus along the Guaporé has rusty neck sides and almost unmarked ochre underparts.
Habitat
Cerrado, dry forest, Chiquitano forest, gallery forest, savanna with tree clumps and forest edges in the lowlands, up to about 1000 m. It forages on thin branches, vines and stems in the lower and middle strata, alone, in pairs or with mixed flocks. It eats ants, termites and larvae. 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
In Bolivia in the eastern lowlands, mainly in Beni and Santa Cruz and locally in northern La Paz and Cochabamba, in savanna, cerrado and dry forest. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in western and central Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search gallery forest and dry forest edges around Santa Cruz and in the savannas of Beni, often in mixed flocks in the lower branches.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a large range and tolerates secondary forest, but cerrado and dry forest are disappearing rapidly in places because of agriculture.
Scientific name
Picumnus albosquamatus | d'Orbigny, ACVMD, 1840
D'Orbigny, ACVMD described the species in 1840 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 albus, 'white', and squamatus, 'scaled', for the white scaly markings. The specimen the first description was based on came from Río Tamampaya, Yungas, Bolivia.