Golden-olive Woodpecker

How to find it

Listen first: one group heard a bird long before reaching it, and it then sat on an exposed perch for a good while. Scan high in thick foliage, epiphyte tangles and mossy branches, then check low stumps and fence posts along hedgerows and edges. It can turn up in edge or forest habitat at any middle elevation, and Monteverde may be easier. Feeders can help too, since it has been seen around them and in a big dead tree behind them in the Turrialba area. It has also been recorded near Monteverde and at a botanical garden near San Vito.

How to recognise it

It is about 20 cm long and bright olive above, barred below.

The male has a grey crown with a red border and nape, pale buff cheeks and a red moustache stripe. The female has red only on the nape.

In both sexes the bill is blackish, the eye is dark red and the legs are grey. The blue-grey crown, pale cheeks and dark eye are the marks that help separate it from similar woodpeckers.

What it sounds like

Recording: Tommy Andriollo, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It usually feeds high up, often in thick foliage, epiphyte tangles or mossy branches, and it is usually seen alone. It also drops to low stumps and fence posts along hedgerows and edges.

It eats ants, termites, large beetles and their larvae. Across its range it also takes some fruit and berries, forages alone or in pairs, and sometimes joins mixed-species flocks.

In Costa Rica it sleeps alone in a hole through the year. It nests in a stump or tree, 1.2 to 18 m up, and breeds between February and May.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it lives at middle elevations: roughly 750 to 2000 m on the Caribbean slope and roughly 1050 to 2150 m on the Pacific slope.

It uses the canopy and edges of forest, old secondary forest, tree plantations, trees around crops and coffee farms, and shaded gardens in hilly country.

It is most numerous in the Central Volcanic Range and the Talamanca range, including the Guarco Valley, the slopes facing the Central Valley and the General-Térraba region. One male was photographed at about 615 m in secondary rainforest in the Tilarán range, on the road from Tilarán to Monteverde.

Similar birds

Rufous-winged Woodpecker looks similar but is much less common. Golden-olive has a blue-grey crown, pale cheeks and a dark eye, which help separate them. Hoffmann's Woodpecker, the golden-fronted one, is a different bird: it is the common woodpecker of Central Valley towns, while Golden-olive lives in cooler mid-elevation forest and edges.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Costa Rican name is Carpintero verde dorado. Other Spanish names listed for the species include Carpintero Olivo, Carpintero Cariblanco and Checo verde dorado.

Status and conservation

It is a resident breeding bird in Costa Rica (R on the AOCR list), and the IUCN lists the species as Least Concern.

Photography tips

Birds are often high in the canopy, so expect distant views. It also drops to low stumps and fence posts along hedgerows and forest edges, which may give a closer chance.