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Fine-spotted Woodpecker - BirdForum Opus

Male
Photo by binus1963
The Gambia, 2014
Campethera punctuligera

Identification

Female
Photo by scottishdude
The Gambia, March 2010

~22 cm (8½ in)
Male

  • Red from forehead to nape
  • White supercilium
  • Red malar stripe
  • White chin
  • Whitish neck sides and throat with black spots
  • Green upperparts

Distribution

Africa:
Western Africa: Mauritania, Senegambia, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo
Eastern Africa: Sudan, South Sudan

One of the commonest Woodpecker species in the Gambia.

Taxonomy

Subspecies

There are 2 subspecies[1]:

  • C. p. punctuligera:
  • C. p. balia:

Habitat

These birds favour savanna woodland containing good stands of Oil palms, scrubland.

Behaviour

They can frequently be found feeding on the ground, especially around termite mounds. The forage in pairs, family groups and sometimes join mixed species flocks.
Their main diet consists of ants and their larvae and termites.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2019. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Avibase
  3. Winkler, H. and D. A. Christie (2020). Fine-spotted Woodpecker (Campethera punctuligera), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.fiswoo1.01

Recommended Citation

External Links

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