All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers › Black-banded Woodcreeper
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Falcons, parrots and passerines Australaves › Falcons and passerines Eufalconimorphae › Parrots and passerines Psittacopasserae
Black-banded Woodcreeper | Dendrocolaptes picumnus
Blauwsnavelmuisspecht | Trepatroncos vientre barrado
The Black-banded Woodcreeper is a large woodcreeper with a streaked head and breast and a black-barred belly. In the guide area it is a bird of montane and foothill forest, where it occurs patchily and usually in low numbers. Its total range extends from southern Mexico to Argentina.
Voice
A series of clear whistles, mainly at dawn and dusk. The sound resembles that of Northern Barred Woodcreeper and can scarcely be separated from it in the field.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
25–28 cm. Large, with a straight, sturdy, dark bill. Head and neck dark brown with fine pale streaks; throat paler. Breast brown with pale streaks, which give way to narrow black bars on the belly. Back olive-brown, wings and tail rufous. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Northern Barred Woodcreeper Dendrocolaptes sanctithomae is finely barred all over, without streaks on head and breast, and lives mainly in the lowlands. Strong-billed Woodcreeper Xiphocolaptes promeropirhynchus is larger, with a longer, slightly curved bill and hardly any barring on the belly. Spot-crowned Woodcreeper Lepidocolaptes affinis is much smaller and has a thin, curved, pale bill.
Habitat
Humid montane, cloud and foothill forest, locally also pine-oak forest; often in the middle and upper levels. It searches trunks and thick branches for insects and other invertebrates and sometimes follows army-ant swarms or mixed flocks. It nests in a tree cavity.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Patchily in the mountains of southern Mexico (Chiapas) through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica and western Panama. Outside the guide area across much of South America, from Colombia and Venezuela to Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
A scarce species usually found by chance, for example in mixed flocks in montane forest. Look for a large woodcreeper with a barred belly.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Local and usually scarce in the guide area; sensitive to the loss of montane forest.
Scientific name
Dendrocolaptes picumnus | Lichtenstein, 1820
Lichtenstein described the species in 1820 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Dendrocolaptes was introduced in 1804 by Hermann. Dendrocolaptes is Greek, from dendron 'tree' and kolaptēs 'chiseller, pecker': 'tree-pecker', after its foraging on trunks. picumnus comes from Picumnus, a Roman rustic deity associated with the woodpecker (picus). The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.