The Knysna woodpecker (''Campethera notata'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family

Picidae Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. M ...

. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, where its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are subtropical or tropical moist lowland

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

s, moist

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

, and subtropical or tropical moist

shrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It m ...

. It is threatened by

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

. It belongs to a

species complex In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

that includes the golden-tailed and Mombasa woodpeckers.

Description

This species is distinguished from the other South African woodpeckers by its thickly spotted under-surface which is covered with black spots from the chin to the vent. Males and females differ slightly. Males have an olive-green color above with indistinct, small transverse bars and a few diamond-shaped sub-terminal spots that are a paler olive-yellow. The female Knysna woodpecker is similar to the male, but the black head is spotted with white and only the

occiput The occipital bone () is a cranial dermal bone and the main bone of the occiput (back and lower part of the skull). It is trapezoidal in shape and curved on itself like a shallow dish. The occipital bone overlies the occipital lobes of the cereb ...

is scarlet.Layard, Edgar Leopold, and R. Bowdler Sharpe. The Birds of South Africa. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1875. Print. The quills are brown, except for near the base where they are externally olive. The secondary quills are olive-brown, duller than the back, and transversely barred with a yellow-tinged white. The primaries are externally spotted with yellow, notched on the inner web with white, and the shafts are brown. The tail is olive-brown shaded with an almost green color and crossed with six bars of an almost yellow color. The tips of the feathers are a dull golden, while the shafts are golden brown. Its head is a gray-black color and all of the feathers on it are tipped with scarlet. The occipital crest (located at the base of the cranium) is completely bright scarlet in color. Its lores are yellowish and minutely spotted with black. The ear-coverts are whitish and streaked with black, while the foreparts of its cheeks are scarlet. The rest of the sides of its face and neck are yellowish white, thickly mottled with black. The feathers in this area are black with a narrow whitish edging. The underside of its body is yellowish, but white on the throat, and, as mentioned above, thickly spotted. These spots are rounded and very large on the breast, but more diamond-shaped on the abdomen. Its flanks are barred with dusky black and the underwing coverts are yellow with black round spots as on the breast. Its eyes are hazel colored. Approximate length is .

Feeding and foraging

The Knysna woodpecker feeds mainly on ants and ant

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The ...

e, as well as

wood-boring beetles The term woodboring beetle encompasses many species and families of beetles whose larval or adult forms eat and destroy wood (i.e., are xylophagous). In the woodworking industry, larval stages of some are sometimes referred to as woodworms. The t ...

and termites, including their eggs and

pupae A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their ...

.BirdLife International (2015) Species factsheet: Campethera notata. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 04/03/2015. It forages at all levels of the

tree canopy In biology, the canopy is the aboveground portion of a plant cropping or crop, formed by the collection of individual plant crowns. In forest ecology, canopy also refers to the upper layer or habitat zone, formed by mature tree crowns an ...

, pecking,

gleaning Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legall ...

and probing in search of prey as it works its way along branches.

Reproduction

Breeding takes place in August–November (mainly October) and the pairs are widely spaced. The nest hole is excavated in a dead tree trunk or branch. It has a

clutch A clutch is a mechanical device that engages and disengages power transmission, especially from a drive shaft to a driven shaft. In the simplest application, clutches connect and disconnect two rotating shafts (drive shafts or line shafts). ...

size of 2–4 eggs, which it incubates for 13–21 days, followed by a fledgling period of 4–6 days.

Distribution and habitat

The Knysna woodpecker is endemic to South Africa. It is thinly dispersed across the coastal lowlands of South Africa and extends north into southern

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

and west to near

Bredasdorp Bredasdorp is a town in the Southern Overberg region of the Western Cape, South Africa, and the main economic and service hub of that region. It lies on the northern edge of the Agulhas Plain, about south-east of Cape Town and north of Cape Agul ...

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

. This species is common locally, but not over its entire coastal range. The total range is less than and its total population has been estimated at 1,500–5,000 individuals, of which 1,000-3,300 are assumed to be mature birds.

Conservation status and threats

Although the Knysna woodpecker has not yet been classified as

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

, the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

lists them as Near Threatened as of 2012. Habitat shifting and alteration are predicted to occur in the future, affecting more than 90% of the population and causing rapid decline. A range contraction in KwaZulu-Natal in the 19th century has been attributed to the clearance of coastal bush for

sugar-cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks t ...

farming and township development. Some conservation actions, such as increasing knowledge and understanding about this species are already underway. For example, an estimated 1,000-1,500 individuals are thought to occur in reserves with these objectives like the

Oribi Gorge Oribi Gorge is a canyon in southern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 35 kilometres north-west of Port Shepstone, which itself is 120 km south of Durban. Oribi Gorge, cut by the Mzimkulwana River, is the eastern gorge of two gorges that cut ...

Nature Reserve. Additionally, some proposed actions include: conducting surveys to estimate the total population size, monitoring population trends through regular surveys, carrying out research into factors that possibly limit the species' population, and increasing the area of suitable habitat with protected status.

References

External links

* Knysna woodpecker
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1264665 Knysna woodpecker Endemic birds of South Africa Knysna woodpecker Taxonomy articles created by Polbot