- Campethera punctuligera
Identification
~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:
- Southwestern Mauritania south to Sierra Leone, east to Central African Republic and southern Chad (and adjacent southwestern Sudan?), and northern Democratic Republic of the Congo
- C. p. balia:
- South Sudan and extreme northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
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
- 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/
- Avibase
- 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
- BirdForum Opus contributors. (2024) Fine-spotted Woodpecker. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 27 April 2024 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Fine-spotted_Woodpecker
External Links
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Search the Gallery using the common name:
GSearch checked for 2020 platform.
