The hairy woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) is a medium-sized woodpecker that is found over a large area of North America. It is approximately in length with a wingspan. With an estimated population in 2020 of almost nine million individuals, the hairy woodpecker is listed by the IUCN as a species of least concern. The species was previously placed in the genus Dryobates.

Taxonomy

thumb|Costa Rican hairy woodpecker (L. v. extimus)

The hairy woodpecker was described and illustrated with a hand-coloured plate by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he included the downy woodpecker, coined the binomial name Picus villosus and cited Catesby's book. The specific epithet villosus is the Latin word for "hairy". Linnaeus specified the type locality as America septentrionali (North America), with specific mention of Raccoon, New Jersey. The hairy woodpecker was formerly usually placed in either Dendrocopos or Picoides but a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 found that these genera did not form monophyletic groups. In the revised generic classification, the hairy woodpecker was moved to the genus Leuconotopicus that was erected by the French ornithologist Alfred Malherbe in 1845. Some taxonomic authorities place the hairy woodpecker in an expanded Dryobates that includes all the species in the genera Leuconotopicus and Veniliornis.

Seventeen subspecies are recognised: It is virtually identical in plumage to the smaller downy woodpecker. The downy has a shorter bill relative to the size of its head, which is, other than size and voice, the best way to distinguish them in the field. These two species are not closely related, however, and are likely to be separated in different genera. Another way to tell the two species apart is the lack of spots on its white tail feathers (present in the downy). Their outward similarity is a spectacular example of convergent evolution. As to the reason for this convergence, only tentative hypotheses have been advanced; in any case, because of the considerable size difference, ecological competition between the two species is slight.

Distribution and habitat

The hairy woodpecker inhabits mature deciduous forests in the Bahamas, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and the United States. It is a vagrant to Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

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File:FemaleHairywoodpecker.jpg|Adult female, Ottawa, Ontario

File:Hairy woodpecker.jpg|Stowe, Vermont

File:Hairy Woodpecker RWD.jpg|Male, Palmer, Alaska

File:Young Hairy Woodpecker.jpg|At a peanut feeder

File:Picoides villosus CT.ogv|Feeding on suet

File:072 Juvenile Hairy woodpecker in Los Quetzales National Park Photo by Giles Laurent.jpg|Juvenile, Costa Rica

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See also

  • Downy woodpecker - A smaller but very similar-looking species.

References

  • Hairy woodpecker - Picoides villosus - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
  • Hairy woodpecker Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
  • Hairy woodpecker sound at Florida Museum of Natural History