Mottled Piculet

The mottled piculet is 10 to 11 cm (3.9 to 4.3 in) long and weighs 11 to 12 g (0.39 to 0.42 oz). Adult males have a black cap and nape with a red patch on the forehead and white spots on the rest of it. Their face is mostly dark olive-brown with some white. Their hindneck and upperparts are warm olive-brown with a buff or rusty tinge on the back. Their flight feathers are dark brown to blackish with wide pale edges on the secondaries and tertials. Their tail is black; the innermost pair of feathers have mostly white inner webs and the outer three pairs have a white streak on the outer web. Their chin and throat are white with thin black bars. Their breast is buffish brown, sometimes with dark streaks. Their belly is pale buff and their flanks a richer buff with wide blackish streaks. Their iris is brown, the orbital ring grayish, the beak black with a gray base to the mandible, and the legs gray. Adult females are identical but with white spots throughout the cap and no red. Juveniles are duller than adults and have an dull brown crown with pale buffish streaks.

The mottled piculet has an almost unique range. It is found from southeastern Brazil's Paraná state south through eastern Uruguay and into Argentina's Misiones and Corrientes provinces. Its typical habitat is lowland evergreen Atlantic forest and Araucaria forest, but it also occurs in gallery forest, bamboo thickets, scrubland, and wooded savannah. In elevation it mostly occurs up to 1,100 m (3,600 ft) but has been found as high as 1,400 m (4,600 ft).

The mottled piculet forages in dense vegetation of the understory and also in trees up to about 8 m (26 ft) above the ground. It takes insect larvae from thin branches, vines, and bamboo stems. It usually forages alone but will join mixed species foraging flocks.