Cinnamon Woodpecker

The cinnamon woodpecker is about 19 to 23 cm (7.5 to 9.1 in) long and weighs 74 to 83 g (2.6 to 2.9 oz). Males and females have the same plumage except on their faces. Both sexes' heads are rufous with a bushy crest and black streaks on the crown. Males have a red chin, throat, and malar with black streaks, and females are the same rufous there as on the rest of their head. Both sexes of adults of the nominate subspecies C. l. loricatus have dark rufous upperparts with narrow black bars. Their flight feathers are blackish with wide rufous bars. The top side of their tail is black with wide buff to whitish bars. Their upper breast is light rufous with black edges and tips to the feathers; the rest of their underparts are paler buff with bold black arrowhead-shaped marks. Their medium-long bill is grayish to yellowish, their iris red, and their legs gray. Juveniles are very similar to adults but with dusky mottling on the throat and irregular markings on their underparts. Subspecies C. l. diversus is the largest. It has more red and less black on the throat and is a stronger cinnamon color than the nominate. It has narrow black bars above, more widely spaced markings below, and a yellower bill. C. l. mentalis is similar to diversus but paler and with less barring above and below. C. l. …

The subspecies of cinnamon woodpecker are found thus:

C. l. diversus, from southeastern Nicaragua through Costa Rica into western Panama C. l. mentalis, Panama and extreme northwestern Colombia C. l. innotatus, northern Colombia between the departments of Córdoba and Santander C. l. loricatus, from western Colombia's Chocó Department south to Ecuador's Guayas Province The cinnamon woodpecker mostly inhabits the interior of humid to wet forest, and occurs only rarely in drier areas. It occasionally is found along the forest edge and in more open landscapes like treed pastures, secondary forest, and clearings. In elevation it ranges from sea level to 760 m (2,500 ft) in Costa Rica and Panama, to 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in Colombia, and to 800 m (2,600 ft) in Ecuador.

The cinnamon woodpecker's primary food is ants and termites; it also eats fruit such as bananas. It usually forages singly or in pairs but does occasionally join mixed-species feeding flocks. In the forest interior it mostly forages near or in the canopy but hunts lower in more open areas. It usually pecks to get its prey but also gleans.