Smoky-brown Woodpecker

The smoky-brown woodpecker is about 18 cm (7.1 in) long and weighs 31 to 50 g (1.1 to 1.8 oz). Males and females have the same plumage except on their heads. Males are red from forehead to nape with dark feather bases showing through. The female's forehead to nape is dark brown with an olive tinge and occasionally some white speckles. Adults of both sexes of the nominate subspecies fumigatus have a mostly olive-brown face with whitish lores, a thin white supercilium, and a black "moustache" with a thin white line above it. Their upperparts are mostly brown to olive-brown with a red tinge on the shoulders and duller brown rump and uppertail coverts. Their flight feathers are dark brown with pale bars on the inner webs. Their tail is blackish brown that is paler on the outer feathers. Their underparts are olive-brown that sometimes is paler on the belly with faint darker bars. Their longish beak is blackish with a paler mandible, their iris deep brown to red-brown, and the legs grayish. Juveniles are duller and more sooty brown than adults, without the red tinge on the back, and with white bars on some flight feathers. Males have a dull red crown and females a dull red forehead. Subspecies oleagineus has longer wings than the nominate and much white around the eyes. …

The subspecies of smoky-brown woodpecker are found thus:

L. (or D.) f. oleagineus, southwestern and eastern Mexico L. (or D.) f. sanguinolentus, from southern Mexico to western Panama L. (or D.) f. reichenbachi, northern and northeastern Venezuela L. (or D.) f. fumigatus, from eastern Panama through Colombia east into northwestern Venezuela and south through Ecuador and eastern Peru into western Bolivia and northwestern Argentina L. (or D.) f. obscuratus, southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Peru The smoky-brown woodpecker inhabits a wide variety of landscapes, most of them wooded. These include humid and wet forest, cloudforest, dry montane and alder woodlands, gallery forest, and secondary forest. It also occurs in the dense understory at the edges of forest and in coffee plantations. In elevation it ranges from near sea level to 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in Mexico, to 750 m (2,500 ft) and locally to 1,850 m (6,100 ft) in Central America, between 800 and 2,700 m (2,600 and 8,900 ft) in Venezuela, mostly between 1,200 and 2,800 m (3,900 and 9,200 ft) in Colombia and Peru, mostly between 1,000 and 1,800 m (3,300 and 5,900 ft) in Ecuador, and between 1,200 and 2,500 m (3,900 and 8,200 ft) in Argentina.

The smoky-brown woodpecker forages singly, in pairs, or in family groups, and often joins mixed species feeding flocks. Most of its diet is adult and larval wood-boring beetles but includes small amounts of fruit. It usually hunts the middle and low levels of the forest, often in dense foliage and vine tangles, but will feed in the canopy and at isolated trees. It mostly finds its prey by pecking and hammering but infrequently probes or gleans.