Spotted Woodcreeper

About the Spotted Woodcreeper

The spotted woodcreeper (Xiphorhynchus erythropygius) is a species of bird in the subfamily Dendrocolaptinae of the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is found in Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama.

The spotted woodcreeper and the olive-backed woodcreeper (X. triangularis) were formerly considered conspecific but since the mid-20th century have been treated as separate species. The spotted woodcreeper's taxonomy is otherwise unsettled. The American Ornithological Society, the International Ornithological Committee, and the Clements taxonomy assign it these five subspecies that Clements puts into two groups:

"Spotted" group X. e. erythropygius (Sclater, PL, 1860) X. e. parvus Griscom, 1937 "Berlepsch's" group X. e. punctigula (Ridgway, 1889) X. e. insolitus Ridgway, 1909 X. e. aequatorialis (Berlepsch & Taczanowski, 1884) However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) treats the two groups as separate species, calling the "spotted" group the "northern spotted woodcreeper" (X. erythropygius) and "Berlepsch's" group the "southern spotted woodcreeper (X. aequatorialis... Wikipedia →