The Story
This female Little Woodpecker (Veniliornis passerinus) clung to a moss-covered branch at Caracolí Bird House, a rural birding lodge in the vereda Zuria outside Villavicencio, in Meta, Colombia. Both sexes have some red on the crown, but the female has less, and her head is grayish olive-brown with indistinct white spots where the male is red. The species is found in every mainland South American country except Chile, Suriname and Uruguay. It forages at every level of the forest and is partial to bamboo. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I used a Canon R5 with the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender for this one from about 11 meters, at 1/45 sec, f/16, ISO 1600. The lodge is a public eBird hotspot, so the birds seen there go into a shared record that anyone can use.
©2026 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Little Woodpecker (Veniliornis passerinus) belongs to the family Picidae (Woodpeckers) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2018), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List
