Green-backed Woodpecker

The little green woodpecker is about 16 cm (6.3 in) long and weighs about 54 g (1.9 oz). The male's crown is olive-blackish with an indistinct reddish colour, and the nape is red. The head, neck and throat are buff, with brown spots. The upperparts are yellowish-green or bronze-green. The flight feathers are brown and have buffish bars. The tail is blackish, with some yellow and green. The underparts are buffish from the throat to the breast and greenish-white below the breast, all of the underparts having deep olive bars. The beak is olive or blackish, the eye is brown, and the legs are olive-grey. The female does not have red on the head and has buff spots on its crown and nape. The juvenile bird has greener upperparts with pale streaks, and its underparts are paler.

The little green woodpecker is widely distributed across tropical Africa. Its habitat is edges of primary and secondary forests, clearings, and mosaics of forest and shrub, at elevations up to 1,000 m (3,300 ft).

This woodpecker eats arboreal ants. Its calls are a plaintive huweeeeh, a harsh whee, kewik, three to four teeay notes, and teerweet. It excavates nests in nests of ants and termites. It breeds in August and possibly in March and April.