Rufous Woodpecker

The rufous woodpecker (Micropternus brachyurus) is a medium-sized brown woodpecker native to South and Southeast Asia. It is short-billed, foraging in pairs on small insects, particularly ants and termites, in scrub, evergreen, and deciduous forests and is noted for building its nest within the carton nests of arboreal ants in the genus Crematogaster. It was for sometime placed in the otherwise Neotropical genus Celeus but this has been shown to be a case of evolutionary convergence and molecular phylogenetic studies support its placement in the monotypic genus Micropternus. Taxonomy This species was formerly placed in the South American genus Celeus due to external resemblance but its disjunct distribution placed it in doubt. Studied in 2006 based on DNA sequence comparisons have confirmed that the rufous woodpecker is not closely related to Celeus and is a sister of the genus Meiglyptes and best placed within the monotypic genus Micropternus. The genus Micropternus was erected by Edward Blyth who separated it from Meiglyptes based on the short first toe with reduced claw. Other genus characters are the short bill lacking a nasal ridge. The nostrils are round and the outer tail feathers are short and about as long as the tail-coverts. Within the wide distribution range of the species, several plumage and size differences are noted among the populations which have been designed as subspecies of which about ten are widely recognized with the nominate population being from Java. M. b. brachyurus – Java. M. b. humei – along the western Himalayas has a streaked throat, greyish head and a pale face. M. b. jerdonii [includes kanarae from the northern western ghats noted as larger by Koelz] – peninsular India and Sri Lanka M. b. phaioceps – eastern Himalayas from central Nepal to Myanmar, Yunnan and southern Thailand. M. b. fokiensis – (has a sooty abdomen) southeast China and northern Vietnam. M. b. holroydi – Hainan. M. b. williamsoni – southern Thailand. Sometimes included within badius M. b. annamensis – Laos, Cambodia and southern Vietnam. M. b. badius – [includes celaenephis of Nias Island] Malay Peninsula south to Sumatra M. b. badiosus – (has a very dark tail) Borneo and north Natuna Islands