The Story
This Red-crowned Woodpecker (Melanerpes rubricapillus) looked out from its nest cavity in a palm trunk near Capurganá, in Chocó, Colombia, showing its red crown, buff face and black-and-white barring. It lives in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas and Tobago. Its diet includes a large amount of fruit and berries, including cultivated papayas and bananas, and it probes, gleans and hammers for insects, mostly in the middle and lower levels of the forest. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/350 sec, f/16, ISO 3200. Capurganá can be reached only by boat or small plane, and it has no cars, which keeps the village and its forest edges quiet for birds like this one.
©2025 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Red-crowned Woodpecker (Melanerpes rubricapillus) 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 2020), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List