Fernandina's Flicker

• It is one of the most threatened woodpeckers in the world, badly affected by habitat loss.
• It is called carpintero de la tierra, the woodpecker of the ground, for its terrestrial habits: it looks for food on the ground, not on trunks.
• Its epithet honours José María Herrera y Herrera, second Count of Fernandina, a Cuban nobleman who owned several sugar plantations.
• It feeds mainly on the ground, eating ants: it is one of the most terrestrial woodpeckers in the Caribbean, and spends much of the day pecking at anthills rather than at trunks.
• It depends on the standing dead palms of the Cuban savannahs: when those palms are felled or burnt, the only substrate in which it can excavate its nest disappears.
• It is one of the most threatened woodpeckers in the Americas, with fewer than four hundred mature individuals spread between the Zapata Swamp and a few other pockets in Cuba.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat & environment

Edges of open woodland with palms, savannah and swamp. Endemic to Cuba: the Sierra del Rosario, the area around the Zapata Peninsula and some parts of Villa Clara, Camagüey, Holguín and Granma

Sexual maturity

12 months

Gestation / incubation

17 days of incubation

Litter / clutch size

4 eggs

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; BirdLife International (species factsheet); Wikipedia (Fernandina's flicker); García 1987, Las Aves de Cuba; Garrido y Kirkconnell 2000, Birds of Cuba; Vigors 1827; eBird

Best time: All year round, though it is a woodpecker that is rarely seen