Birdfinding.info ⇒ Easy to find throughout Puerto Rico. Within San Juan, Julio Enrique Monaga National Park and Piñones State Forest are reliable sites.
Puerto Rican Woodpecker
Melanerpes portoricensis
Family: Picidae
Endemic to Puerto Rico, where it is common in wooded habitats throughout the island, and Vieques, where it is uncommon.
Identification
Unmistakable. Both sexes have a unique white, visor-like mask, black upperparts with a white rump, and ashy underparts.
Male’s underparts are largely suffused with vivid red, both on the throat and centrally from the chest to the belly. Female has a plain throat and some red on the breast and belly.
The only other woodpecker that occurs regularly on Puerto Rico is the rare winter migrant Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which is not similar.
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, male. (Boquerón Reserve, Puerto Rico; 2003.) © Rafy Rodríguez
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, male. (Maricao State Forest, Puerto Rico; March 21, 2012.) © Alan Selin
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, female with extensive red on the underparts. (Aguadilla, Puerto Rico; December 19, 2015.) © Knut Hansen
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, male. (Rancho Vegas, Cayey, Puerto Rico; May 11, 2017.) © José Santiago
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, male. (Rancho Vegas, Cayey, Puerto Rico; June 7, 2018.) © José Santiago
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, female. (Tres Hermanos National Park, Añasco, Puerto Rico; July 29, 2013.) © Jacob C. Cooper
Puerto Rican Woodpecker, female at nest. (Cambalache State Forest, Puerto Rico; March 21, 2017.) © Frédéric Pelsy
Notes
Monotypic species.
References
eBird. 2018. eBird: An online database of bird distribution and abundance. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, N.Y. http://www.ebird.org. (Accessed November 4, 2018.)
Gorman, G. 2014. Woodpeckers of the World: A Photographic Guide. Firefly Books, London.
Raffaele, H. 1989. A Guide to the Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Raffaele, H., J. Wiley, O. Garrido, A. Keith, and J. Raffaele. 1998. A Guide to the Birds of the West Indies. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Toms, J.D. 2010. Puerto Rican Woodpecker (Melanerpes portoricensis), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T.S. Schulenberg, ed.). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, N.Y. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.purwoo1.01.