Little Woodpecker

About the Little Woodpecker

The little woodpecker (Veniliornis passerinus) is a species of bird in subfamily Picinae of the woodpecker family Picidae. It is found in every mainland South American country except Chile, Suriname, and Uruguay. In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the little woodpecker in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). He used the French name Le petit pic de S. Domingue and the Latin name Picus dominicensis minor. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the little woodpecker. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Picus passerinus and cited Brisson's work. Linnaeus mistakenly specified the type location as Dominica. This has been corrected to Cayenne in French Guiana. The specific name passerinus is from Latin and means "sparrow like".

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