Hispaniolan Woodpecker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
| Melanerpes striatus (Statius Muller, 1776) |
The Hispaniolan Woodpecker is a medium sized Woodpecker endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Their back is covered in yellow and black stripes. Males have a dark red stripe from their forehead to their neck while females the red stripe extends from the nape to the neck only. Their tail base is brilliantly red while the tail itself is black. The rump is olive-grey.
Contrary to most woodpeckers the Hispaniolan Woodpecker is a social species that takes advantage of having a large number of individual adult birds in the colony to protect a nesting bank or tree.
Their habitat, which is restricted to the Haiti and the Dominican Republic, extends from the costs, over the deserts to the mountains of the island.
[edit] References
- Short, LL: "Burdens of the picid hole-excavating habit", Wilson Bulletin, 1979
- BirdLife International (2004). Melanerpes striatus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 30 December 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
