Red-crowned Woodpecker

The red-crowned woodpecker is 16 to 18.5 cm (6.3 to 7.3 in) long and weighs 40 to 65 g (1.4 to 2.3 oz). The sexes' plumage is alike except for their head pattern. Adult males of the nominate subspecies have a pale yellow to whitish forehead, a bright red crown, and an orange-red nape and hindneck. Adult females have the same pale yellow to whitish forehead but a pale gray-buff to whitish crown and a reddish to orange-red nape and hindneck. Both sexes' cheeks, chin, and throat are grayish-buff. Their mantle and back are barred black and white and the rump and uppertail coverts are unbarred white. Their flight feathers are black with white bars throughout. Their tail is black with white bars on the central and outermost pairs of feathers. Their underparts are variable but usually buffish-gray to gray-buff with an olive or yellowish wash and a reddish to orange-red patch on the central belly. Their lower flanks and undertail coverts have black bars. Their bill is longish and blackish, their iris is red to brown, the bare skin around the eye gray-brown, and the legs gray. Juveniles are duller and browner than adults, their nape and hindneck are paler, their upperparts' bars less contrasting, their underparts often lightly streaked, and their belly patch paler and somewhat mottled. Subspecies M. r. …

The subspecies of red-crowned woodpecker are found thus:

M. r. rubricapillus, from southwestern Costa Rica through Panama into northern and central Colombia, in the northern half of Venezuela, in Guyana and Suriname, and on Tobago M. r. subfusculus, Coiba Island off southwestern Panama M. r. seductus, Isla del Rey off southeastern Panama M. r. paraguanae, the Paraguaná Peninsula of northwestern Venezuela The red-crowned woodpecker inhabits a wide variety of landscapes, both wet and dry. These include the interior, clearings, and edges of mature deciduous forests, secondary forests, coastal scrublands, mangroves, plantations and gardens. In elevation, it mostly occurs from sea level to 1,700 m (5,600 ft) but reaches as high as 1,900 m (6,200 ft) in Venezuela.

The red-crowned woodpecker's diet includes a large amount of fruits and berries including cultivated ones like papayas and bananas. Another major portion is many types of insects and spiders, but fewer larvae of wood-boring beetles than many woodpeckers. It also takes nectar from flowers. The species forages at all levels of its habitat but favors the middle and lower strata. It is typically seen singly or in pairs. It feeds by probing, gleaning, and hammering for insects, and by reaching for fruit which it pierces or pecks open when too large to swallow whole. It will take fruit from feeders, and is "considered a nuisance locally in plantations and gardens because of its fruit-eating habits."