Pale-billed Woodpecker

Campephilus guatemalensis

eBird provides this description of the Pale-billed Woodpecker:  Large red-headed woodpecker of tropical forest in lowlands and foothills; also in pine-oak forest of lower mountain slopes. Red head (with black forehead and throat on female) is often more squared than Lineated. Juvenile Pale-billed has black face with white cheek stripe, very like Lineated, but soon attains red head and usually travels with adults. All plumages of Pale-billed have a white V on the back, compare Lineated. Loud double-rap drum distinctive; drum in West Mexico often longer, but still very slow-paced. 

The website Birds of the World gives this descriptive information about this bird:  The Pale-billed Woodpecker is one of the largest and most spectacular woodpeckers in Central America. Found in lowland forests from northern Mexico south to western Panama, this species is fairly common throughout most of its range, but is not present in heavily deforested areas, and may now be extirpated from the northwestern limit of its reported distribution in Sonora, Mexico. The Pale-billed Woodpecker also overlaps geographically with the similarly-sized Lineated Woodpecker (Dryocopus lineatus), which has a greater affinity for forest edge.

I saw my first Pale-billed Woodpecker on my birding trip to Costa Rica with Tropical Birding Tours.  I watched the bird from quite a distance from one of the trails in the jungle at La Selva on February 6, 2023. I wasn’t able to get very good photographs, certainly none that do this striking and beautiful bird justice.  I am delighted, none-the-less, to add this bird to my life list