Cream-colored Woodpecker

About the Cream-colored Woodpecker

The cream-colored woodpecker (Celeus flavus) is a species of bird in subfamily Picinae of the woodpecker family Picidae. It is found in most mainland South American countries except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) assigns two subspecies to the cream-colored woodpecker, the nominate C. f. flavus (Statius Muller, 1776) and C.f. subflavus (Sclater, P.L. & Salvin, 1877). Until 2014 the IOC had included two more subspecies, C.f. peruvianus (Cory, 1919) and C.f. tectricialis (Hellmayr, 1922) but that year merged them into the nominate. As of early 2023 the Clements taxonomy and BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World retain all four subspecies.

The subspecies "intergrade extensively, producing numerous intermediates, and in much of range many individuals [are] impossible to assign to a particular race; geographical limits given are therefore somewhat arbitrary." Because the four subspecies do on average have plumage differences, this article follows the four-subspecies model where data for each exist.

The cream-colored woodpecker is about 24 to 27 cm (9.4 to 11 in... Wikipedia →