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Golden-olive Woodpecker | Colaptes rubiginosus
Olijfrugspecht | Carpintero olivo
The Golden-olive Woodpecker is a medium-sized, golden-olive woodpecker with a grey crown, pale cheeks and a red nape. It occurs over almost the whole guide area, from north-eastern Mexico to Panama, and in many montane forests is one of the most frequently seen woodpeckers. The birds of north-eastern Mexico are sometimes treated as a separate species, Colaptes aeruginosus.
Voice
The song is a long, rising rattling trill. Also a sharp keek and a liquid dyeet. It drums in short rolls.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–23 cm. The upperparts are golden-olive with a bronze wash. Forehead and crown are slate grey, edged red at the sides, and the nape is red. The cheeks are pale grey to whitish, the throat dark and finely streaked. The underparts are pale yellow with dense olive barring. The male has a broad red moustache; the female has red only on the nape and a dark moustache. Birds in north-eastern Mexico have more bronzy wings.
Confusion species
Grey-crowned Woodpecker Colaptes auricularis (Pacific slope of Mexico, from Sonora to Oaxaca) is very similar but smaller and lacks red along the sides of the grey crown. Rufous-winged Woodpecker Piculus simplex and Stripe-cheeked Woodpecker Piculus callopterus have a red crown in the male, olive cheeks and rufous flight feathers. Golden-green Woodpecker Piculus chrysochloros (eastern Panama) has a yellow throat and a yellow neck stripe.
Habitat
Humid forest, cloud forest, pine-oak forest, forest edges, secondary forest and plantations with shade trees such as coffee, from the lowlands up to about 2500 m; in the south of the guide area mainly in the foothills and middle elevations, in Mexico and Yucatán also in the lowlands and in semi-evergreen forest. It searches trunks and branches in the middle and upper storeys for ants, beetle larvae and other insects, and also eats berries. It excavates a nest hole in a dead tree or branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In Mexico on the Gulf slope from Nuevo León and Tamaulipas south through Veracruz, Puebla and Oaxaca to Chiapas, and on the Yucatán Peninsula; then through Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua to Costa Rica and Panama. Outside the guide area from Colombia and Venezuela through the Andes to north-western Argentina, and in Trinidad and Tobago.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen in the montane forests of El Cielo in Tamaulipas, in the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas and at Monteverde in Costa Rica. The rattling song and the quiet tapping of foraging birds show where it is; the green plumage is inconspicuous among the leaves.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a very large range and adapts to many forest types and semi-open landscapes.
Scientific name
Colaptes rubiginosus | (Swainson, 1820)
Swainson described the species in 1820 as Picus rubiginosus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Colaptes was introduced in 1825 by Vigors. Colaptes is Greek kolaptēs 'chiseller', from kolaptō 'to peck, to chisel', after the hacking into wood. rubiginosus is Latin for 'rusty', from rubigo 'rust', after the rusty tones of the plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Caracas, Venezuela.