Red-rumped Woodpecker

How to find it

Start with edge habitats and the mangroves around the Golfo Dulce, which one Costa Rica birding writer suggests for a better chance. Patience and knowing its calls usually lead to a sighting where it occurs. A scope helps, because the bird is small and sits high in the trees. Birders have most often found it by scope from a bridge, early in the morning at the Rincón Bridge. Watch mixed flocks too, since two trip reports found it in one, in the afternoon. The open wetlands near Ciudad Neily, in the far south, are an easy add-on to a Golfo Dulce trip.

How to recognise it

Look for these marks:

- Size: small, about 15 to 16.5 cm long.

- Upperparts: golden olive.

- Rump: bright red, the mark that gives the bird its name.

- Underparts: buff-white, finely barred in dark brown.

- Bill: black.

Males have a red crown and a yellow nape. Females have a dark brown crown and an orange-brown nape.

A Costa Rican source describes the bird as small, brownish and barred underneath, and says the rump pattern is unique among the country's woodpeckers. One birding writer calls it small and fairly inconspicuous, which helps explain why it is so easy to overlook high in the trees.

What it sounds like

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

Behaviour and diet

It feeds mainly on insects, and a Costa Rican species page gives its food as larvae and insects. It usually forages alone, in pairs or in small groups, from mid-levels up to the canopy, pecking and hammering on branches and trunks.

Two trip reports, one on the Osa and one on the road from La Gamba to Golfito, found it in a large mixed flock of birds active in the afternoon. It nests in a hole in a dead tree, and the clutch is two or three white eggs.

Where it lives

It lives in the canopy of humid lowland forest. From there it comes down into adjacent secondary growth, mangroves and more open groves of trees. Across its range it also uses gallery forest, orchards and wooded gardens.

Across its range it is usually found below 1,000 m, and in places up to 1,700 m. In Costa Rica the subspecies neglectus lives in the south, and a species list for the Zurquí mountains also includes this woodpecker.

Similar birds

Costa Rica has similar woodpeckers in the south, such as Red-crowned and Golden-naped. Red-crowned is common and easy, including in gardens. The Red-rumped is much smaller, barred below, and has the red rump, so look for that rump to separate it from other small woodpeckers.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Spanish name on the Costa Rican list is Carpintero Lomirrojo. It is also called carpintero culirrojo or rabirrojo, and one older Costa Rican species list uses the diminutive Carpinterito lomirrojo. Another English name is Kirk's Woodpecker, which goes back to its first scientific description, based on a bird from Tobago.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it as a resident (R), and the IUCN rates it Least Concern with a stable global population.

Photography tips

Birders have most often found it by scope from a bridge, early in the morning at the Rincón Bridge. A scope helps because it is small and sits high in the trees.