Cream-backed Woodpecker - 3 Photos

Originally posted 3/22/11 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

  
Silvia Vitale was kind enough to grant permission for me to post these excellent photos she took of a female Cream-backed Woodpecker.  She took them at La Cumbre, Cordoba Province, Argentina near the village.  As you see here, the female sports a striking, white moustachial stripe adjacent to her ivory bill.  The male bird's head is almost entirely red.  Cream-backed Woodpeckers inhabit xeric (dry) woodlands of the chaco habitat in southern-central parts of South America, occurring in savannas, pastures with copses, groves, woodland and transitional forests, up to 2,500m.*

*Reference - Woodpeckers: A Guide to the Woodpeckers of the World by H. Winkler, DA Christie & D. Nurney.

Carpintero Lomo Blanco

Originally posted 10/19/10 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

Here is an interesting video posted by infofon on YouTube that shows a female Carpintero Lomo Blanco, a Cream-backed Woodpecker, displaying an array of behaviors. Two birds are briefly in flight before one bird does a couple of double raps (typical of some members of the Campephilus genus) perhaps to signal another bird nearby. I'm not sure whether or not it is the same bird seen earlier, but toward the end of the video, you will see a female hitching herself up a tree trunk and then foraging.

Press play, then change the setting at the lower right of the video box from  360p to 480p to watch it at higher resolution.

I know a little Spanish, but not enough to translate the comments in this video. If you can translate them into English, please post a comment and then I'll revise this post with that info.  UPDATE - Thanks to Martjan for this translation of the video comments into English:

"Well, we are going to try to continue observing. They told us it is very difficult to make a video take because they do not sit still. And they stay very few seconds in a tree and then fly to another tree. So we continue to walk, searching for other individuals around here".

Cream-backed Woodpecker Family

Originally posted 9/13/2010 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

Here's a video of a Cream-backed Woodpecker family group that has a pleasant soundtrack and also includes interesting vocalizations by the birds.   Near the end, just before the one minute mark, note the two double-knocks that the male bird does which compel a female bird to draw close, from the bottom then toward him by hitching herself up the tree trunk!

Thanks to Michael Blendinger for sharing this clip with us.

Visit his Discovering Bolivia site here.

One of the Largest of All Woodpeckers!

One of the most widely seen videos of Magellanic Woodpeckers is also one of the best!  It's this clip from The Eloquent Communicators episode from The Life of Birds series by David Attenborough.  Available for a long time on YouTube in poorer quality, this enhanced (in sight and sound) version comes from the BBC's Wildlife Finder site.  The BBC recently made it available at their site to viewers outside of the United Kingdom. *UPDATE - unfortunately, the high quality clip is no longer available, as far as I can tell. The video above comes from YouTube.*

The video is fascinating for the several double raps it shows the birds doing in response to Attenborough hitting a tree trunk with two stones.  It's also got fantastic flight footage that includes this bird's audible wingbeats and its signature, swooping style of landing on a tree trunk.  I prefer the small view version here rather than the full screen view.

Magellanic Woodpecker - BAM-Bam!

In this segment from his 1998 series, The Life of Birds, David Attenborough summons a male Magellanic Woodpecker by mimicking it's signature double knock on a tree in Patagonia.  In addition to this clip, the BBC maintains an entire page of information on the Magellanic Woodpecker here at this link.  Notes that accompany the Intro clip on that page describe different foraging behavior of females and males when raising nestlings to strategically maximize food resources.  Males have been known to catch lizards and even the chicks of other birds!

Campephilus double knocks vary in volume and are not necessarily always loud.  But, consider the loud double knock of the Magellanic Woodpecker that occurs at 1:33 min into this clip.  The power behind that double knock is illustrative, I think, of how very loud the double knocks of its northern relative, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, could be, as often described in historical literature, given its substantially larger dimensions.  BAM-Bam!

Ivory-billed Woodpecker
- length 48-53cm/19-21in (approximate)
- 450 - 570 grams (approximate)

Magellanic Woodpecker
- length 36-38cm/14-15in
- male 312-363 grams; female 276 - 312 grams

Source for measurements

- Woodpeckers: A Guide to the Woodpeckers of the World by H. Winkler, D. A. Christie & D. Nurney

Talking with a Pale-billed Woodpecker

Originally posted 5/15/10 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

Back in November of last year, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO) released this fascinating 10+ minute video entitled Talking with a Pale-billed Woodpecker. One of several excellent bird videos by CLO, it is available in 1080p HD (you may need to adjust your settings to see it in HD) and takes you on a hike through a Costa Rican rain forest in search of the Pale-billed Woodpecker. Researchers Martjan Lammertink and Chris Saker utilized a wooden box especially designed to simulate the double-knock sound that Pale-billed Woodpeckers and other members of the Campephilus genus use as a communication signal.

Watch how the bird rewards their efforts to draw it closer to them using the double-knocker by flying into the area and then doing its own series of double-knocks in response to what it has heard. It's also quite nice to be able to watch a male Pale-billed Woodpecker emerge from its roost in the beautiful forest in Costa Rica at dawn (all in HD video, so great viewed at full screen size), without having to get up that early!

 

Red-necked Woodpecker in Ecuador

Originally posted 10/22/10 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

Red-necked Woodpecker, originally uploaded by rowbird2005.

A leafy green and white make for an attractive background in this photo of a male Red-necked Woodpecker in Ecuador.   This bird is one of the less seldom photographed members of the Camp. genus, so special thanks to Forrest Rowland for granting permission to post his photo here. 

Robust Woodpecker Video

Originally posted 2/7/11 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

This video shows a male Robust Woodpecker on a snag in Parque Nacional Iguazú in Argentina.  Turn your volume up to hear this bird do two double knocks, a signal these woodpeckers use to keep in close touch with each other.

This video is posted here courtesy of:

Birds of the Pampas Plain