• Summary
• Text account
• Data table and detailed info
• Distribution map
• Reference and further resources

Taxonomic note
Picoides maculatus (del Hoyo and Collar 2014) was previously placed in the genus Dendrocopos. Dendrocopos maculatus (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) has been split into D. maculatus and D. ramsayi following Collar et al. (1999) and BirdLife International (2001), who initially placed it in the genus Picoides. Subsequently, the genus Dendrocopos has been used, following Winkler and Christie (2002). Because this split was made in a BirdLife publication, the justification is repeated here in full (but the references are not supplied). Both Hachisuka (1931-1935) and Voous (1947) treated ramsayi as a separate species, and indeed it is so distinctive as to be arguably closer to Sulawesi Woodpecker P. temminckii than it is to P. maculatus (this view is also expressed, with the comment that ramsayi is "the ancestor common to both", by White and Bruce 1986), and given the evident morphological proximity of Brown-capped P. moluccensis, Grey-capped P. canicapillus and Pygmy Woodpeckers P. kizuki to both maculatus (non-Sulu forms) and ramsayi, there is no compelling reason to combine the latter two as a single species. Sulu birds differ from other Philippine forms in: replacing all black or dark brown with a mid-brown; lacking virtually all white spotting on wings and coverts; lacking black or dark brown spotting or streaking on the undersides; showing an ill-defined yellow or yellowish-orange breast-band, plus (in the male) a far more strongly developed red area on the nape. The specific separation of ramsayi is all the more arguable for the geographically closest representative of maculatus - fulvifasciatus of Mindanao and Basilan showing the strongest pied effect. The notion that these two forms are "bridged" by maculatus, with a throw-away description of ramsayi as "aberrant" (Salomonsen 1953), not only fails to deal with the suggestion of Voous (1947) that ramsayi represents an early invasion of the Philippines, but also misses the point that maculatus is not geographically interposed between the two forms it is supposed to bridge. It is worth noting that in the paper in which both ramsayi and fulvifasciatus were first established, the formal description of ramsayi compared it to temminckii rather than to maculatus (Hargitt 1881).

Taxonomic source(s)
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N.J., Christie, D.A., Elliott, A. and Fishpool, L.D.C. 2014. HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 1: Non-passerines. Lynx Edicions BirdLife International, Barcelona, Spain and Cambridge, UK.

Population justification: The global population size has not been quantified, but the species is described as generally common and the most abundant woodpecker in its range (del Hoyo et al. 2002). This species is considered to have a medium dependency on forest habitat, and tree cover is estimated to have declined by 4.8% within its mapped range over the past 10 years (Global Forest Watch 2022, using Hansen et al. [2013] data and methods disclosed therein). Therefore, as a precautionary measure, it is tentatively suspected that this loss of cover may have led to a decline of between 1-19% in the species' population size over the same time frame.

Trend justification:   .

Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Species factsheet: Philippine Pygmy Woodpecker Picoides maculatus. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/philippine-pygmy-woodpecker-picoides-maculatus on 22/12/2024.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2024) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/search on 22/12/2024.