Eurasian Three-toed Woodpecker

About the Eurasian Three-toed Woodpecker

The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus) is a medium-sized woodpecker that is found from northern Europe across northern Asia to Japan. The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He coined the binomial name Picus tridactylus. The type locality is Sweden. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek tridaktulos meaning "three-toed" (tri- is "three-" and daktulos is toe). The species is now placed in the genus Picoides that was introduced by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. The Eurasian three-toed woodpecker was formerly considered conspecific with the American three-toed woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis).

Eight subspecies are recognised: P. t. tridactylus (Linnaeus, 1758) – northern Europe to the southern Ural Mountains and to south-eastern Siberia and north-eastern China P. t. alpinus Brehm, CL, 1831 – central and south-eastern Europe to western Ukraine and Romania

P. t. crissoleucus (Reichenbach, 1854) – northern Ural Mountains to eastern Siberia P. t. albidior Stejneger, 1885 – eastern Siberia and Kamchatka Peninsula... Wikipedia →