White-backed Woodpecker

• It is the scarcest woodpecker in Spain: there are fewer than a hundred pairs and it is practically confined to the Navarrese Pyrenees.
• Its European distribution is relict: after the last glaciation it was left confined and isolated in the mountain massifs of the south of the continent.
• In 2020 the first GPS telemetry study of the species was published, making it possible to calculate its true home range.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Mature beech woods, pure or mixed, with old and rotting trees in which to feed and excavate the nest. In Spain it lives only in the Navarrese Pyrenees (Irati, Quinto Real) and the woods of the Ansó valley (Huesca), where its presence is vestigial. Its conservation depends directly on forest management respecting those needs

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; SEO/BirdLife (ficha y III Atlas); Campión et al. 2020, Acta Ornithologica 55; Cárcamo 2006, Pirineos 161; Cárcamo 2016, Le Casseur d'os 16; Cárcamo et al. 2019, Munibe 67; Fernández, Azkona y Lorente 1994, Ardeola 41(2); Garmendia et al. 2006, Biodiversity and Conservation 15; Gorman 2004, Woodpeckers of Europe

Best time: All year round in the beech woods of Irati and Quinto Real

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.