Includes Little Green Woodpecker
Photo © by Mark Harper
Quitexe Area, Angola, 22 August, 2024
- Campethera maculosa
Campethera cailliautii
Identification
16 cm
Male
- Black forehead and crown with red tipped feathers
- Red nape
- Buffy lores
- White supercilium
Distribution
Africa
Western Africa: Mauritania (?), Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mali (?), Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola
Eastern Africa: South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi
Southern Africa: Zimbabwe
Taxonomy
Little Green Woodpecker from western tropical Africa was formerly considered a full species, and at that time, the scientific name for Green-backed Woodpecker was Campethera cailliautii.
Subspecies
Clements recognizes these subspecies[1]:
- C. m. maculosa:
- Senegal and Guinea-Bissau to central Ghana and Liberia
- C. m. permista :
- Eastern Ghana to extreme south-western South Sudan, south-western Uganda, northern Angola and southern Democratic Republic of the Congo
- C. m. nyansae:
- South-western Ethiopia to south-western Kenya, north-western Tanzania, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and north-eastern Angola
- C. m. cailliautii:
- C. m. loveridgei:
- Central Tanzania to extreme eastern Zimbabwe and Mozambique
Habitat
Varied habitat; forest to thorn bush savanna. Usually near water
Behaviour
Diet
Their main diet consists of ants and termites.
References
- Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2023. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2023. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
- Gill, F, D Donsker, and P Rasmussen (Eds). 2023. IOC World Bird List (v 13.2). Doi 10.14344/IOC.ML.13.2. http://www.worldbirdnames.org/
- Kirwan, G. M., N. Moura, H. Winkler, and D. A. Christie (2023). Green-backed Woodpecker (Campethera maculosa), version 3.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman and N. D. Sly, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.grbwoo2.03
Recommended Citation
- BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) Green-backed Woodpecker. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 5 May 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Green-backed_Woodpecker
External Links
GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1
