Crimson-bellied Woodpecker

About the Crimson-bellied Woodpecker

The crimson-bellied woodpecker (Campephilus haematogaster) is a species of bird in the subfamily Picinae of the woodpecker family Picidae. It is found in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The crimson-bellied woodpecker was at one time placed in its own genus Cniparchus that was later merged into genus Phloeoceastes which was itself later merged into the current Campephilus.

For much of its time taxonomists assigned two subspecies to the crimson-bellied woodpecker, the nominate C. h. haematogaster (Tschudi, 1844) and C. h. splendens (Hargitt, 1889). From about the year 2000 authors have suggested that splendens was better treated as a separate species. By at least 2018 BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) had recognized the split, and in July 2023 the International Ornithological Committee (IOC) followed suit.

The South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society (SACC) and the Clements taxonomy retain the two-subspecies, unsplit, treatment. A 2023 SACC proposal to accept the split was rejected. The crimson-bellied woodpecker as recognized by HBW and the IOC is monotypic. Wikipedia →