Melancholy woodpecker
The melancholy woodpecker is a species of woodpecker. It is found in West Africa from Sierra Leone east to Nigeria, living in forests, forest edges, clearings and woodlands. It is sometimes considered to be a subspecies of the Gabon woodpecker. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed it as a least-concern species.
Taxonomy
This species was formally described by the German ornithologist Gustav Hartlaub in 1857. The species is monotypic. It was sometimes considered conspecific with the Gabon woodpecker, Dendropicos gabonensis, because D. gabonensis reichenowi is intermediate between the two species.Description
image:Gabon Woodpecker - Ghana S4E2409.jpg|left|thumb|In Kakum National Park, GhanaThe melancholy woodpecker is long. The crown is olive-brown, and the nape is red in the male and blackish in the female. The face is white and has an olive-brown malar, dusky ear coverts and a white supercilium. The chin and throat are white and often have dark streaks or spots. The upperparts are bronzy-green. The flight feathers are brown, with greenish-bronze edges. The tail is black above and grey-black below. The underparts are greenish-yellow, with broad brown streaks. The beak is greyish, the legs are olive or grey, and the iris is chesnut. The juvenile bird is duller, and its upperparts do not have a bronze tone.