Pale-billed Woodpecker Sighting

Liberato (Gato) Pop was a BFREE Avian Technician from 2006 – 2013. He began working with us when he was just 16 years old as a member of the Harpy Eagle research team. Gato now works as a Park Ranger for TIDE but continues to do contract work with us from time to time. He regularly helps teach field courses and he also documents our resident and migrant birds.

This month, he began a monitoring project to document which birds utilize the young cacao agroforest. Our intention is for him to continue to collect data in coming years, so that we can understand how the bird population changes over time.

Gato’s visit in February was his first time to BFREE since early 2020. The first bird he noticed was a Pale-billed Woodpecker, which, while a wonderful, resident bird, is not an unusual sight. Still, he was thrilled and immediately searched with his binoculars for a band on the bird’s leg. He located the band and began taking photos to document this finding. This bird, he explained, was the only Pale-billed Woodpecker that he and William Garcia, previous BFREE Bird Project Leader, ever banded. Since the program ended in 2013, he estimates that they placed the band in 2011 – 10 years ago!

Pale-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus guatemalensis)

are the largest woodpeckers in Belize and have a full red head. They commonly eat large larva of wood-boring beetles which they remove from the trunks and limbs of large decaying trees. Much to Jacob Marlin’s dismay, they are also very fond of burrowing into cacao pods. The one Gato spotted was in the forest opposite the cacao searching for food on a dead tree.

While woodpeckers are more long-lived than smaller birds, we are excited to know that this woodpecker has utilized the BFREE Privately Protected Area for so many years. We also thankful to Gato Pop for documenting this sighting!