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Black-cheeked Woodpecker | Melanerpes pucherani
Zwartwangspecht | Carpintero cara negra
The Black-cheeked Woodpecker is a small Melanerpes woodpecker of humid lowland forest, recognised by the black patch around and behind the eye and the black-and-white barred back. It often feeds high in the canopy and along forest edges and eats much fruit as well as insects. In the guide area it lives from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
Usually a series of about four short, rattling trills on the same pitch. Also a longer, smoother rattle, a loud krrrr and a high, piercing whistle. Drums infrequently.
Recording: Sue Riffe — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
17–19 cm. A black patch around the eye extends down the side of the neck, with a narrow white line behind the eye. The male has a golden-yellow forehead and red crown and nape; the female has a whitish forehead, a black central crown and red only on the hindcrown and nape. Back and wings black with narrow white bars, rump white. Underparts buffy white with dense, wavy dark bars and a red patch in the centre of the belly. Bill fairly long and black.
Confusion species
Red-crowned Woodpecker Melanerpes rubricapillus (south-western Costa Rica and Panama) lacks the black eye patch and has a paler greyish-buff head and underparts. Golden-naped Woodpecker Melanerpes chrysauchen (Pacific slope of southern Costa Rica and western Panama) has a golden-yellow nape and a black back with a broad white central stripe and no bars. Hoffmann's Woodpecker Melanerpes hoffmannii and Golden-fronted Woodpecker Melanerpes aurifrons have a pale head without a black patch and live mainly in drier, open country.
Habitat
Interior and edges of humid evergreen lowland and foothill forest, mostly below 900 m and locally to about 1200 m, also mature secondary forest, abandoned plantations and clearings with scattered trees; sometimes in gardens. It eats insects, fruit and nectar. The nest hole is excavated in a dead trunk or branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean slope of south-eastern Mexico (mainly southern Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas) through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica; in Panama on both slopes. Outside the guide area in western Colombia and Ecuador to extreme north-western Peru.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen at La Selva in Costa Rica, at Tikal in Guatemala and along Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto) in Panama. It often sits in fruiting trees at forest edges and in clearings.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common in forest and semi-open country with tall trees; declines where forest disappears entirely.
Scientific name
Melanerpes pucherani | (Malherbe, 1849)
Malherbe described the species in 1849 as Zebrapicus Pucherani; 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'. pucherani honours the French zoologist Jacques Pucheran (1817–1895) of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. The specimen the first description was based on came from Colombia (designated later; originally given in error as Tobago).