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Rufous-winged Woodpecker | Piculus simplex
Roestvleugelspecht | Carpintero alirrufo
The Rufous-winged Woodpecker is a small, olive-green woodpecker with rufous flight feathers, a red crown in the male and a pale eye. It forages inconspicuously in the middle layer of humid forest, often with mixed flocks. In the guide area it lives from Honduras to western Panama.
Voice
A plaintive, nasal pee-ah or chee-ah, singly or in a short series, and a soft, rattling series. Drums little.
Recording: GABRIEL LEITE — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18 cm. The upperparts are olive-green and the flight feathers rufous, visible especially in flight and as rufous panels on the closed wing. The face is plain olive without a pale stripe. The throat is olive with pale spots, the breast olive with pale yellow spots and the belly pale yellow with olive barring. The eye is pale grey to whitish. The male has a red crown and nape and a red moustache; the female has only a red nape and an olive crown.
Confusion species
Stripe-cheeked Woodpecker Piculus callopterus (Panama, from Veraguas eastwards) is very similar but has fine white streaks on the cheeks and a dark eye; the ranges barely overlap. Golden-olive Woodpecker Colaptes rubiginosus has a grey crown with red sides, pale cheeks and no rufous in the wings. Red-rumped Woodpecker Veniliornis kirkii is smaller, with a red rump and without rufous wings.
Habitat
Middle layer and lower canopy of humid lowland and foothill forest up to about 900 m, also tall secondary forest and forest edges. It searches branches and vines for ants, termites and beetle larvae, often in pairs or with mixed flocks. It excavates a nest hole in a dead tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
On the Caribbean slope of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to western Panama (Bocas del Toro); also on the Pacific slope in south-western Costa Rica and adjacent western Panama. A few records are known from the far east of Guatemala. It does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen at La Selva, in the forests around Arenal Volcano and on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. With mixed flocks in the middle layer it pays to watch for a green woodpecker with rufous wings.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Rather scarce and dependent on humid forest; locally declining through forest loss.
Scientific name
Piculus simplex | (Salvin, 1870)
Salvin described the species in 1870 as Chloronerpes simplex; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Piculus was introduced in 1824 by Spix. Piculus is a diminutive of Latin picus 'woodpecker': 'little woodpecker'. simplex is Latin for 'simple, plain', after the rather unpatterned plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bugaba, Chiriquí, Panama.