Hairy Woodpecker

How to find it

Start in the highlands around the Savegre Valley, Los Quetzales area and Cerro de la Muerte, where visitors most often meet it. Scan big trunks and main branches for a bold black and white bird, then stand quietly and listen for tapping, a sharp 'peek' or a whinny. Check hummingbird feeder restaurant stops, since one tour itinerary lists it there with Acorn Woodpecker. Look at the ground below highland lodge restaurants too, and give quiet roadsides in the upper Savegre Valley a slow look. A guide who knows nesting sites can help, as one spotted a bird near a nest and called it out.

How to recognise it

This is a medium-sized woodpecker with a square-looking head and a straight, chisel-like bill about as long as the head.

Both sexes show a broad white stripe down the middle of a black back, black wings checkered with white, and two white head stripes. Males add a red patch toward the back of the head.

The Costa Rican form is the one to learn. Its underparts are cinnamon-colored, where birds in North America are white below. It is also smaller and darker than its northern relatives. A visiting birder on Cerro de la Muerte found the bird much smaller and darker than the ones at home, and one photographer called the Costa Rican birds tanner than the Colorado birds he knew.

What it sounds like

Recording: Jennifer Rycenga, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

Range-wide, it feeds mostly on insects, especially wood-boring and bark beetle larvae, ants and moth pupae in cocoons.

In Costa Rica, one bird was perched motionless along a road in the upper Savegre Valley for a long time. A hawk then flew off from a nearby perch, and the woodpecker moved on once it was gone. Another was seen foraging on the ground downhill from a lodge restaurant while a tour group sat down to lunch. A female was found excavating a nest in the highlands, and the nest holes are small, about 2 inches tall, leading to a cavity 8 to 12 inches deep.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it is a highland bird. The Costa Rican subspecies (extimus) lives from north-central Costa Rica to western Panama, and at the southern end of its range in Central America the species is restricted to higher mountain forests.

In the highlands it sometimes feeds on bamboo (Chusquea). Range-wide it is mainly a forest bird, found where mature woodland is common, and it also uses wooded parks and shaded areas with mature trees, though it is often uncommon there. A group walking a recently cleared highland path recorded it with Brown-billed Scythebill and Red-faced Spinetail.

Similar birds

Range-wide, the Hairy Woodpecker is larger than the Downy Woodpecker, with a heavier and longer bill, and it usually lacks black markings on the outer tail feathers. Downy is not listed as a Costa Rican resident here, so this tip is mainly for North American birds. In Costa Rica the bigger puzzle is the brown underparts, which can throw off birders who know the white-bellied northern birds.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua the Spanish name is Carpintero Serranero, roughly 'highland woodpecker'. Elsewhere the species is also called Carpintero Velloso and Carpintero Albinegro Mayor.

Status and conservation

The AOCR lists it as a resident (R), and the IUCN rates the species Least Concern.

Photography tips

A female excavating a nest has given photographers a chance to photograph her at work in the highlands. Nest holes are small, about 2 inches tall, so scan trunks carefully. Watching feeder stops and the ground below lodge restaurants has also turned up birds.