Spot-breasted Woodpecker Gallery

Colaptes punctigula

The Birds of the World website introduces the Spot-breasted Woodpecker with this descriptive information:  The Spot-breasted Woodpecker is found in a wide variety of habitats such as rainforest, deciduous and gallery forest, mangroves, swamp edges, llanos, scrub, and moriche palm groves. It occurs throughout Amazonia, the Guyanas, Venezuela and Northern Colombia and is well differentiated geographically with six subspecies varying in size, degree of breast speckling and other subtle characters.  The Spot-breasted Woodpecker has a superficial resemblance to the Golden-olive Woodpecker (Piculus rubiginosus), which is about the same size and has a similar facial pattern; but the Golden-Olive Woodpecker is strongly banded below, and has unbanded upperparts. Although widespread, the Spot-breasted Woodpecker rarely is very common.

I met my first Spot-breasted Woodpecker on the morning of Tuesday, August 23, 2023.  Our Jeff Parker Tour group was staying at Southwild’s Santa Tereza Lodge and I spotted this rare woodpecker at one of the viewing areas near the lodge.  He didn’t stick around for long, but I managed to get photos sufficient for identification.  For details of my Brazilian trip that include the sighting of this bird, look here.  Below are a couple of my photos of this striking little bird.