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Splendid Woodpecker | Campephilus splendens
Subliemspecht | Carpintero espléndido
The Splendid Woodpecker is a large red-and-black woodpecker of humid foothill forest in Panama and western Colombia and Ecuador. It was long included in the Crimson-bellied Woodpecker of the eastern Andes but is now treated as a separate species. It is scarce, lives unobtrusively in the forest interior and often forages low on thick trunks.
Voice
Drums with the double knock typical of the genus, a loud rap immediately followed by a second. Calls a harsh, nasal kyuh and a short rattling series.
Recording: Oliver Komar — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Converted to mp3, mono, full length · Xeno-canto (via Wikimedia Commons)
Identification
33–35 cm. Head and crest red, the cheek and throat black with two pale ochre stripes, one above and one below the cheek. Upperparts black, lower back and rump red. The underparts are dark red with blackish barring. The bill is long, straight and dark. In the female the lower pale stripe continues onto the side of the neck.
Confusion species
Crimson-crested Woodpecker Campephilus melanoleucos and Lineated Woodpecker Dryocopus lineatus have a white neck stripe that continues as a white line along the side of the back and pale, barred or streaked underparts rather than red ones; both live mainly at forest edges and in semi-open lowland woodland.
Habitat
Tall, humid foothill and lower montane forest, mainly between about 300 and 1500 m, locally lower in the Chocó-Darién rainforest. It keeps to the forest interior, usually in pairs, and chisels for beetle larvae on thick trunks and rotting trees in the lower and middle tree layers.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area only in Panama: foothills and mountain slopes of Coclé and eastern Panamá Oeste (Altos de María) east through Colón, Panamá province (Cerro Jefe, Cerro Azul) and Guna Yala to Darién (Cerro Pirre, Cerro Chucantí); rare west to Veraguas and Bocas del Toro. Outside the guide area in western Colombia and western Ecuador.
How and when to look
The best chances are on Cerro Jefe and at Nusagandi in Guna Yala, and in Darién around Cerro Chucantí and the station on Cerro Pirre. The double-knock drum often gives away its position.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but scarce and local in the guide area. It depends on large, unbroken forest with thick and dead trees and is therefore sensitive to clearing in the foothills.
Scientific name
Campephilus splendens | Hargitt, 1889
Hargitt described the species in 1889 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Campephilus was introduced in 1840 by Gray. Campephilus is Greek, from kampē 'caterpillar' and philos 'loving': 'caterpillar-lover', after its diet of insect larvae. splendens is Latin for 'splendid, shining', after the handsome black-and-red plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Puerto Valdivia, Antioquia, Colombia.