Hoffmann's Woodpecker
Encyclopedia
Hoffmann's Woodpecker, Melanerpes hoffmannii, is a resident breeding bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 from southern Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

 south to Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. It is a common species on the Pacific slopes, locally as high as 2150 m. It is expanding on the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 slope, aided by deforestation. This is further facilitated by its tendency to wander about outside the breeding season.

The adult Hoffmann's Woodpecker is 18 cm long and weighs 68g. Its upperparts and wings are neatly barred with black and white, and it has a white rump. The underparts are pale buff-grey with a yellow central belly patch. The male has a white forehead, red crown, and yellow nape. The female has a white crown and forehead and reduced yellow nape. Young birds are duller, have less white above and less yellow on the belly.

This common and conspicuous species gives a rattling wicka-wicka-wicka call and both sexes drum on territory.

The Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
The Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Melanerpes aurifrons, is a North American woodpecker. Its preferred habitat is mesquite and riparian woodlands. It is distributed from Texas and Oklahoma in the United States through Mexico to Honduras and northern Nicaragua...

 replaces it to the north. It is very similar, but has a yellow forehead; also, the calls are very different. The two species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 hybridize at the Rio Pespire in Honduras.

This woodpecker
Woodpecker
Woodpeckers are near passerine birds of the order Piciformes. They are one subfamily in the family Picidae, which also includes the piculets and wrynecks. They are found worldwide and include about 180 species....

 occurs in deciduous open woodland, second growth, shade trees and hedges, but avoids dense forest. It feeds on insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s, often extracted from decaying wood, but will take substantial quantities of fruit and nectar and will mob the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl
Ferruginous Pygmy Owl
The Ferruginous Pygmy Owl is a small owl that breeds in south-central Arizona in the USA, south through to Mexico, Central America and South America to Bolivia and Argentina. Trinidad, as well as other localities, have endemic subspecies of this owl...

.

It nests in an unlined hole up to 9 m high in a dead tree. The clutch is two or three glossy white eggs, incubated by both sexes.

This woodpecker is named for the German naturalist Karl Hoffmann
Karl Hoffmann (naturalist)
Karl Hoffmann was a German physician and naturalist.Hoffmann was born in Stettin and studied at Berlin University. In 1853 he travelled to Costa Rica with Alexander von Frantzius to collect natural history specimens. He served as a doctor in the Costa Rican army during the invasion of William...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK