Pale-billed Woodpecker
Pale-billed Woodpecker – Campephilus guatemalensis
This large, 15″ long woodpecker is the tropical equivalent of the fabled extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker (aka Woody Woodpecker!) once found the US. It is a major presence in the rain forest of BIB, swooping between dead tree snags searching for beetles and other insects it hears boring away beneath the surface. It tends to make quite large excavations. The holes may be enlarged to use as nesting sites or for roosting, as these woodpeckers spend the nights in hollowed out cavities in trees. More info is here.
You may have heard one of their courtship tattoos if you’ve been around BIB in the spring if you thought workers out in the forest dropped two planks to the ground – a sharp double drumbeat. You can hear that drumbeat and typical pale-billed woodpecker calls on this site.
If you’re a birder, check out the female’s black forehead and throat. The young pale-billed has a black face with white cheek stripe, but soon gets it’s adult-colored feathers and is seen traveling with its parents as they forage and excavate for insects and beetle larvae, lizards, berries, or other fruit, making long, rustling swoops between trees as they search.
There was a nesting pair in a cavity about 60′ up in a dead tree near the Maya Circle end of Toucan Trail in 2015. They successfully fledged two chicks. Unfortunately, the tree fell in a windstorm and couldn’t be used by the birds again.