The Black-cheeked Woodpecker, Melanerpes pucherani, is a resident breeding bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 from southeastern Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 south to western Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

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This woodpecker

Woodpecker

Woodpeckers are near passerine birds of the order Piciformes. They are one subfamily in the family Picidae, which also includes the piculets and wrynecks. They are found worldwide and include about 180 species....

 occurs in the higher levels of wet forests, semi-open woodland and old second growth. It nests in an unlined hole 6–30 m high in a dead tree. The clutch is two to four glossy white eggs, incubated by both sexes. The binomial commemorates the French zoologist Jacques Pucheran

Jacques Pucheran

Jacques Pucheran was a French zoologist.Pucheran accompanied the expedition on the Astrolabe between 1837 and 1840, under the command of Jules Dumont d'Urville, with fellow-naturalists Jacques Bernard Hombron and Honoré Jacquinot...

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The Black-cheeked Woodpecker feeds on insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s, but will take substantial quantities of fruit and nectar.

This common and conspicuous species gives a rattling krrrrrl call and both sexes drum on territory.

Description

The adult is 18.5 cm long and weighs 63 g. It has black upperparts with white barring on the back, white spotting on the wings and a white rump. The tail is black with some white barring, and the underparts are pale buff-olive with a red central belly. There is a black patch through the eyes and on the cheeks, a yellow forehead, and a red nape. The crown is red in the male and black in the female. Young birds are duller, have less white above and less red on the belly.