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.