Request for Photos for a New Book

Originally posted 4/02/11 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

Pale-billed Woodpecker, originally uploaded by Dick Tipton.

Gerard Gorman has put out a call for submissions of top-class photos of woodpeckers from anyone who would like to be involved in a new book provisionally entitled Woodpeckers of the World: a photographic guide. if interested, please visit his Woodpeckers of the World blog and view submission details on the upper left sidebar.

Go to Woodpeckers of the World

The photo you see above is of a juvenile Pale-billed Woodpecker. It's extraordinary because it's rare to find photos of young birds in this genus. Dick Tipton took this photo at the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Southern Mexico on Feb 10, 2008.

Find more info on the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve here.

Nesting Biology of the Powerful Woodpecker

Photo by J. Simbaña

The Powerful Woodpecker was named long ago, in 1845 by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, a French naturalist and ornithologist who was the nephew of famed Emperor Napoleon.

These 165 years later, very little is known about the breeding biology of this bird, an uncommon resident of montane regions from Venezuela to Peru (according to the article cited herein). The remarkable photos you see here are two of several within an article entitled First description of the eggs and nestlings of Powerful Woodpecker (Campephilus pollens) by Harold F. Greeney, Jose Simbaña & Lucia A. Salazar-V., and published February 26, 2010 in Boletín SAO in which the authors state:

Here we present the first observations, from north-eastern Ecuador, 
on the eggs and nestlings of this poorly known species.

The full-text article, including its amazing photos, is freely available online under Creative Commons license.  The two photos here were taken by J. Simbaña and are posted here with permission.

Find the article here.

Photo by J. Simbaña

Powerful Woodpecker

powerful woodpecker, originally uploaded by WLA.

Many thanks to WLA on Flickr for sharing this photo of a juvenile male Powerful Woodpecker, who also offers this interesting info:

"The bird in question was a pet in an indigenous village. Its pretty young and the sole survivor of a brood of three birds."

This photo displays the classic arrangement of toes in Campephilus woodpeckers.  It is not the zygodactly arrangement typical of so many other woodpeckers, of two pairs of toes arranged opposite each other, pointing top and bottom.  Rather, the third toe of the bird is elongated and extended horizontally to brace the large bird against a tree trunk, as a person on a very narrow cliff face might extend each arm to brace him or herself against the cliff.


Consider this when you see in illustrations of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers and other Campephilus species because the illustrators too often go with the incorrect zygodactyl toe arrangement that's typical of many other woodpeckers, but not those in the Campephilus genus.