Carpintero Pechinegro/Ringed Woodpecker/Celeus torquatus

Nombre en español: Carpintero Pechinegro

Nombre en inglés: Ringed Woodpecker

Nombre científico : Celeus torquatus

Familia: Picidae

Canto: Andrew Spencer

El carpintero pechinegro (en Colombia y Venezuela (Celeus torquatus), también denominado carpintero fajeado (en Ecuador) o carpintero anillado (en Perú y Paraguay), es una especie de ave piciforme perteneciente al género Celeus de la familia Picidae. Se encuentra en los bosques tropicales de las tierras bajas de Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, Guayana Francesa y Brasil.

Descripción

Mide entre 27 y 29 cm de longitud. El plumaje varía según la subespecie. C. t. torquatus: Cabeza color canela claro, el macho presenta faja malar roja. Manto castaño, orlado de negro; cuello anterior y pecho negros; vientre amarillento. C. t. occidentalis: tiene el manto con más pintas negras y el vientre blancuzco con rayas negras. C. t. tinnunculus: como la subespecie occidentalis, todo rayado de negro.

Reproducción

Excava el nido en troncos y ramas de árboles secos y palmeras y pone huevos blancos y brillantes en el fondo.

Ringed woodpecker

The ringed woodpecker (Celeus torquatus) is a species of bird in the family Picidae that contains the woodpeckers, piculets, and wrynecks. It is found in northern Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and western Venezuela. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical swamps.

Taxonomy

The ringed woodpecker was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D’Histoire Naturelle, which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon’s text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon’s description included a scientific name, but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Picus torquatus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The ringed woodpecker is now placed in the genus Celeus that was introduced by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1831. The generic name is from the Ancient Greek word keleos for a «green woodpecker». The specific epithet torquatus is the Latin for «collared».

Three subspecies are recognised:

C. t. torquatus (Boddaert, 1783) – eastern Venezuela, the Guianas and northeastern Brazil
C. t. occidentalis (Hargitt, 1889) – southeastern Colombia, Amazonian Brazil and northern Bolivia
C. t. tinnunculus (Wagler, 1829) – eastern Brazil

The online edition of the Handbook of the Birds of the World has split the ringed woodpecker and created the Amazonian black-breasted woodpecker (Celeus occidentalis) and the Atlantic black-breasted woodpecker (Celeus tinnunculus). Neither split was supported by the results of molecular genetic studies.

Description

The adult ringed woodpecker has a length of about 27 cm (11 in). The head is crowned by a brown, shaggy tuft. The male has bright red cheeks, which the female lacks, but otherwise the sexes are similar. The head, neck and throat are cinnamon-brown and the upper parts of the body and wings are chestnut brown, variously streaked or barred with black. Both the tail and the upper breast are black, while the lower breast and belly are barred in black and white, or are cinnamon, depending on subspecies. The eye is chestnut brown, the beak grey or yellowish and the legs grey.