The Bermuda flicker (''Colaptes oceanicus'') is an extinct

woodpecker 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. ...

from the genus ''

Colaptes ''Colaptes'' is a genus of birds in the woodpecker family Picidae. The 14 species are found across the Americas. ''Colaptes'' woodpeckers typically have a brown or green back and wings with black barring, and a beige to yellowish underside, with ...

''. It was confined to Bermuda and is known only by fossil remains dated to the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...

and the

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

. However, an old travel report by explorer Captain John Smith from the 17th century may also refer to this species.

Extinction

Though most material is from

deposits unearthed by

Storrs L. Olson Storrs Lovejoy Olson (April 3, 1944 – January 20, 2021) was an American biologist and ornithologist who spent his career at the Smithsonian Institution, retiring in 2008. One of the world's foremost avian paleontologists, he was best known ...

David B. Wingate David Balcombe Wingate OBE, born October 11, 1935, is an ornithologist, naturalist and conservationist. He was born in Bermuda. In 1951 he helped Robert Cushman Murphy and Louis S. Mowbray re-discover a bird species thought extinct since ...

and others in Admirals Cave, the Wilkinson Quarry and the Walsingham Sink Cave in

Hamilton Parish Hamilton Parish (originally Bedford Parish) is one of the nine parishes of Bermuda. It was renamed for Scottish aristocrat James Hamilton, 2nd Marquess of Hamilton (1589-1625) when he purchased the shares originally held in the Virginia Company ...

in Bermuda in 1981, there is one bone, a

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) and meta ...

from a juvenile, which is from a Holocene layer in Spittal Pond. This fact, and an old travel report by Captain John Smith from 1623, may give evidence to the possibility that this species just may have persisted until at least the early colonization of Bermuda. Smith wrote:

References

Bermuda flicker The Bermuda flicker (''Colaptes oceanicus'') is an extinct woodpecker from the genus '' Colaptes''. It was confined to Bermuda and is known only by fossil remains dated to the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. However, an old travel report by ...

Birds of Bermuda Extinct animals of North America Bird extinctions since 1500 Fossil taxa described in 2013 Extinct birds of Atlantic islands

Late Quaternary prehistoric birds {{Bermuda-stub