Veniliornis mixtus
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~50%
The checkered woodpecker (Veniliornis mixtus) is a species of bird in subfamily Picinae of the woodpecker family Picidae. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The checkered woodpecker was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Picus mixtus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.
The checkered woodpecker was at one time placed in genus Dyctiopicus, which was merged into Dendrocopos, which in turn was merged into Picoides where it and its sister species the striped woodpecker (V. lignarius) were considered outliers. In 2006, Moore et al. published research on mtDNA COI and Cyt b sequences which suggested that the... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | El Impenetrable National Park | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 2 | El Palmar National Park | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 3 | Iberá National Park | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 4 | Serra da Canastra National Park | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 5 | Chapada dos Guimarães National Park | 🇧🇷 Brazil |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Buenos Aires | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 2 | Rosario | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 3 | Cordoba | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 4 | Asuncion | 🇵🇾 Paraguay | |
| 5 | Mendoza | 🇦🇷 Argentina |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Checkered Woodpecker sighting in El Palmar National Park on a given day, based on 30 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 95th most-seen of the 151 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 50%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May and September–October
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Checkered Woodpecker in El Palmar National Park on a given day, against under 5% in January, March–April and July, the lowest months.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Checkered Woodpecker sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
2nd of 5
Of the 5 parks where we can rate Checkered Woodpecker sightings, El Palmar National Park ranks 2nd at about 10%. The best odds are in El Impenetrable National Park (Argentina, about 40%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Checkered Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in El Palmar National Park (30 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
