Little Woodpecker

The little woodpecker is about 14 to 15 cm (5.5 to 5.9 in) long and weighs 24 to 37 g (0.85 to 1.3 oz). Males and females have the same plumage except on their heads. Males of the nominate subspecies passerinus have a red forehead, crown, and nape with dark feather bases showing through. The female is grayish olive-brown with indistinct white spots where the male is red. Adults of both sexes have a mostly dark brownish-olive face with pale barring on the chin and throat. Their upperparts are mostly bronzy olive-green with red feather tips, and pale barring on the rump. Their flight feathers are brown with green edges, and narrowish whitish bars on the primaries and secondaries. Their wing coverts have small pale spots. Their tail is dark brown with thin pale bars on the outer feathers. Their underparts are dark olive narrowly barred with buffish white. The iris is deep brown, the longish beak blackish with a paler mandible, and the legs are dark gray. Juveniles are duller and have less bronzy upperparts and less regular bars on the underparts. Both sexes have some red on the crown, the male more than the female. The other subspecies have differences from the nominate and each other but tend to intergrade. Subspecies modestus has a white "moustache", obvious spots on the wing coverts, and gray-brown underparts with irregular barring. …

The subspecies of little woodpecker are found thus:

V. (or D.) p. fidelis, eastern Colombia and western Venezuela V. (or D.) p. modestus, central and northeastern Venezuela V. (or D.) p. diversus, northern Brazil north of the Amazon V. (or D.) p. agilis, extreme southern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, western Brazil, and northern Bolivia V. (or D.) p. insignis, west central Brazil south of the Amazon V. (or D.) p. tapajozensis, east central Brazil along the lower Amazon V. (or D.) p. passerinus, the Guianas and northeastern Brazil (but see below) V. (or D.) p. taenionotus, eastern Brazil V. (or D.) p. olivinus, southeastern Bolivia, southern Brazil, eastern Paraguay, and northwestern and northeastern Argentina Regarding the range of passerinus, the IOC and Clements list it in "the Guianas", but the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society has no records of it in Suriname. The little woodpecker inhabits a wide variety of landscapes, though it generally shuns forest interiors. It usually stays to the edges of cloudforest, várzea forest, and riparian forest. It occurs in gallery forest with bamboo stands, deciduous woodland, mangroves, secondary forest, wooded savanna, and caatinga. …

The little woodpecker forages at all levels of the forest, from the undergrowth to the canopy; it is partial to bamboo. It feeds singly, in pairs, in small groups, and as a member of mixed species foraging flocks. It vigorously pecks and hammers on trunks and branches and bamboo nodes. Its diet includes a wide variety of adult and larval insects including ants, termites, and beetles.