Identification: Little Woodpecker (Veniliornis passerinus) is olive-green above with bronze tones and faint buff flecks.
Their wings are green, median coverts are dotted white, and flight feathers are brown with some white bars. Thus, the dusky or olive below is exceptionally barren, buff, or white. Undertail coverts are heavily barred in white, gray, or olive. Tail brown, outer feathers slightly barred buff. Face and ear coverts are dusky; the neck is faintly flecked pale. The white mustache line is faint or absent in some races. Throat finely barred buff, Iris chestnut, Bill greyish, and Legs greyish. Sexes differ: male’s red on the crown, nape flecked grey; females lack red, crown grey dotted white. Moreover, both sexes of juveniles have red (less so on females) on the white-dotted grey crown, pale iris, and irregular barring below.
Vocalizations: Rising, strident ki-ki-ki or wi-wi-wi series. Single, sharp kik and squeakier kwip notes. Sharp, rising, chattering wuwuwuwiwiwi and high-pitched rattling wika-wika-wika.
Drumming: Its drumming is repeated; level-pitched, 1-second rolls are produced.
Status: The little woodpecker is widespread and not uncommon overall, but perhaps declining locally due to deforestation.
Habitat: Various forests are used, including várzea, caatinga, gallery forests, bamboo, mangroves, plantations, and degraded stands, in some regions’ drier savannas, gardens, and cloud forests. In Amazonian Brazil, there is usually riverine secondary growth.
Range: This woodpecker is found in South America. It occurs over a vast area, from Colombia and Venezuela to Bolivia and Argentina. sea level to 1300m. Resident and sedentary.
Taxonomy and variation: There are nine races: passerinus (the Guianas, NE Brazil) has a pale bill and narrow pale barring below; modestus (NE Venezuela) yellowish above, with a clear white moustache and spotting on wings; fidelis (E Colombia, W Venezuela) also has moustache, yellowish tail barring and scalloped breast; diversus (N Brazil) has an indistinct moustache, broad barring below, males with grey forecrown; agilis (E Ecuador, Peru, N Bolivia, W Brazil) has thin moustache and superciium; insignis (WC Brazil) is the smallest race, lacks moustache, the male has grey forecrown; tapajozensis (C Brazil) is yellowish above with rufous spots; taenionotus is yellowish-green above speckled red, with broad barring below and large wing covert spots; olivinus (S Brazil, Paraguay, S Bolivia, N Argentina) is the largest race, male with red only on hind crown and nape.
Similar species: Dot-fronted Woodpecker is larger, more spotted above, and marked on the face. Other similar relatives are yellow on the nape and neck.
Food and foraging: The food consists of arboreal ants, termites, beetles, and other invertebrates. Often unobtrusive, foraging at most levels, alone or in mixed-species flocks
Race: Also, note that the adult female bird Little Woodpecker lacks red, with the crown being grey speckled with white. This is the nominated race.
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