Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus)
About the Black-backed Woodpecker
The black-backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus), also known as the Arctic three-toed woodpecker, is a medium-sized woodpecker (23 cm (9.1 in) long) inhabiting the forests of North America. The black-backed woodpecker was described and illustrated by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1832 from a specimen collected near the source of the Athabasca River on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada. He coined the binomial name Picus arcticus. The specific epithet arcticus is the Latin word for "northern" or "arctic". The black-backed woodpecker is now placed in the genus Picoides which was erected by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
A real field recording of the Black-backed Woodpecker. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
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Our streaming copies are mirrored from the original xeno-canto file and transcoded to 96 kbps mono — a modification, so we note it here; the licence for each recording is named in its credit below.
1 recording on this page · licensed CC BY-SA ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Canada, United States · xeno-canto lists 81 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- American Three-toed WoodpeckerPicoides dorsalisrecording
- Eurasian Three-toed WoodpeckerPicoides tridactylusrecording
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.