Ground Woodpecker

About the Ground Woodpecker

The ground woodpecker (Geocolaptes olivaceus) is one of only three ground-dwelling woodpeckers in the world (the others are the Andean and campo flickers). It inhabits rather barren, steep, boulder-strewn slopes in relatively cool hilly and mountainous areas of South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini and has yet to be recorded outside of Southern Africa. It is found in a broad swath running from southwest to northeast, from the Cape Peninsula and Namaqualand to Mpumalanga. It is closely related to the woodpeckers of the genus Campethera, some of which also employ terrestrial foraging strategies.

The ground woodpecker was described in 1782 by the English ornithologist John Latham from a specimen collected from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. He used the English name "Crimson woodpecker" but did not introduce a Latin name. When the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin updated Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae for the 13th edition in 1788 he included a short description of the ground woodpecker, cited Latham's work and coined the binomial name Picus olivaceus. The ground woodpecker is now placed in the genus Geocolaptes that was introduced by the English naturalist... Wikipedia →