Rufous Woodpecker

How to identify

Field marks

1. Dark barring on the wings and tail
2. Paler head and darker underparts
3. Short black bill with a slightly curved culmen
4. Inconspicuous crest that can be raised

Male, female and young

The male has red feather tips below the eyes and elsewhere; females and juveniles lack these red tips.

Voice

Often gives three sharp, nasal notes, “keenk-keenk-keenk”.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: February–April · Most records: India, Malaysia, Singapore

Rufous Woodpecker has been recorded at 541 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 14 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. IIT BombayIndia584 records
2. Rabindra SarovarIndia509 records
3. PeralathvayalIndia433 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IndiaMalaysiaSingaporeThailandCambodiaNepalChinaBangladesh

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The rufous woodpecker (Micropternus brachyurus) is a medium-sized brown woodpecker native to South and Southeast Asia. It is short-billed, foraging in pairs on small insects, particularly ants and termites, in scrub, evergreen, and deciduous forests and is noted for building its nest within the carton nests of arboreal ants in the genus Crematogaster. It was for sometime placed in the otherwise Neotropical genus Celeus but this has been shown to be a case of evolutionary convergence and molecular phylogenetic studies support its placement in the monotypic genus Micropternus.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions