Rufous Woodpecker

The rufous woodpecker (Micropternus brachyurus) is a medium-sized brown woodpecker native to South and Southeast Asia. It is short-billed, foraging in pairs on small insects, particularly ants and termites, in scrub, evergreen, and deciduous forests and is noted for building its nest within the carton nests of arboreal ants in the genus Crematogaster. It was for sometime placed in the otherwise Neotropical genus Celeus but this has been shown to be a case of evolutionary convergence and molecular phylogenetic studies support its placement in the monotypic genus Micropternus. The rufous woodpecker is about 25 cm long, overall dark brown with dark bands on the feathers of the wing and tail giving it a black-barred appearance. The head appears paler and underparts are of a darker shade. The bill is short and black with a slight curvature of the culmen. At the nostrils the bill is narrow. The tail is short and rufous with narrow black bars but in subspecies badiosus the tail is dark with narrow rufous bars. Feather margins are pale in squamigularis and annamensis. Feathers on the neck, ears and lore are unmarked. Males have red-tipped feathers under eyes, between eye and ear coverts and on malar region sometimes forming a patch. Females and young lack the red feather tips. A weak but erectile crest is present. Juveniles appear streaked on the throat but some subspecies also have streaked throat feathers. In the field, birds can appear soiled and smell of ant secretions (Crematogaster ants are unique in having a spatulate tip to the sting that is used merely to spray fluid forward at intruders from a raised gaster) due to their foraging or nesting activities.