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Guadeloupe Woodpecker | Melanerpes herminieri
Guadeloupespecht | Carpintero de Guadalupe
The Guadeloupe Woodpecker is the only woodpecker that breeds in the Lesser Antilles and is found only on Guadeloupe. It is not shy but often stays high in the canopy, so it is more often heard than seen. The species depends heavily on dead wood in which to excavate its nest holes.
Voice
Contact calls in variable series, wa-wa-wa or woo-woo-woo, and a powerful, harsh ch-arrgh, often repeated. The male drums, fairly softly and mainly near the nest.
Recording: Étienne Leroy — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
26–28 cm, a fairly large woodpecker that looks uniformly dark. The whole plumage is black; in good light the back and wings show a dark blue gloss and the underparts a dark red to wine-red sheen. The sexes are alike in plumage, but the male has a distinctly longer and heavier bill and is slightly larger. Juveniles are a duller black with less gloss.
Confusion species
There is no other woodpecker on Guadeloupe; Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Sphyrapicus varius is a very rare vagrant to the Lesser Antilles. Carib Grackle Quiscalus lugubris is also black, but has a pale yellow eye and a long tail and walks a lot on the ground; it does not climb trunks.
Habitat
Mainly tropical rainforest and montane rainforest, also semi-evergreen and dry forest, swamp forest and mangroves, and plantations and parks with large trees. From sea level to about 900 m, most numerous between 100 and 700 m in wooded hills. It eats insects, especially ants, termites and beetle larvae, and fruit, sometimes hanging upside down from branches to reach it. The nest is a cavity in a dead trunk or branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Only on Guadeloupe, on Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre; Basse-Terre holds most of the population. It is absent from Les Saintes, Marie-Galante and La Désirade. It does not occur outside Guadeloupe.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the forests of the Parc national de la Guadeloupe on Basse-Terre, for example along the Route de la Traversée and the trails near it. The harsh call is the best lead; dead trees at forest edges are the places to look for nest holes.
Conservation status
Not threatened; from 2004 to 2019 the species was listed as Near Threatened. Surveys gave more than 10,000 pairs in 1998 and nearly 20,000 in 2007. Threats are fragmentation of forest by building, removal of dead wood, egg predation by rats, competition for nest holes and hurricane damage.
Scientific name
Melanerpes herminieri | (Lesson, 1830)
Lesson described the species in 1830 as Picus Herminieri; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Melanerpes was introduced in 1832 by Swainson. Melanerpes is Greek, from melas 'black' and herpēs 'creeper': 'black creeper'. herminieri honours the French pharmacist and naturalist Félix Louis L'Herminier, who worked on Guadeloupe and published on birds. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guadeloupe (originally given in error as 'North America').