Spot-breasted Woodpecker

The spot-breasted woodpecker is 18 to 21 cm (7.1 to 8.3 in) long and weighs 50 to 79 g (1.8 to 2.8 oz). Males and females have the same plumage except on their heads. Adult males of the nominate subspecies C. p. punctigula have a black forehead and forecrown and a red hindcrown and nape. They are white from their lores around the eye to the nape with a red malar stripe below it. Their chin and throat are black with white spots. Adult females have red only on the very back of the crown. Both sexes have bronze-green upperparts with brownish black bars; their rump and uppertail coverts are paler and less heavily barred. Their flight feathers are brown with pale barring and yellow shafts. Their top side of their tail is brown; the central feathers have weak bars and the outer feathers have green to yellow bars. The tail's underside is yellow-brown with brown bars. Their underparts are dull olive-yellow with a reddish tinge on the upper breast and small black spots there and on the lower breast and flanks. Their undertail coverts are yellowish with black spots. Their short bill is blackish, their iris rufous brown, and the legs greenish gray sometimes with a yellowish tinge. Juveniles are generally duller than adults, have greener upperparts, and have larger spots on their underparts. Subspecies C. p. …

The subspecies of spot-breasted woodpecker are found thus:

C. p. ujhelyii, eastern Panama to northern Colombia C. p. striatigularis, west-central Colombia C. p. punctipectus, eastern Colombia and Venezuela except its northwest C. p. zuliae, northwestern Venezuela C. p. punctigula, the Guianas and Amapá in northern Brazil C. p. guttatus, the Amazon Basin of eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, northeastern Bolivia, and western to northeastern Brazil The spot-breasted woodpecker inhabits a wide variety of humid lowland landscapes both open and wooded, though it prefers sparse woodlands to dense ones. It occurs in rainforest, both deciduous and gallery forest, várzea, mangroves, llanos, palm savanna, and palm, shade coffee, and other treed plantations. In elevation it mostly ranges up to 600 m (2,000 ft) Venezuela, to 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in Colombia, to 1,200 m (3,900 ft) but locally to 1,600 m (5,200 ft) in Ecuador, and to 900 m (3,000 ft) in Peru.

The spot-breasted woodpecker feeds almost entirely on adult ants, their larvae, and their pupae. It usually forages in pairs or family groups, and at any height from the ground to the forest's midlevel. It captures its food mostly by gleaning and probing, and on the ground also sweeps aside litter.