Veniliornis mixtus
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
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 Iberá National Park on a given day, based on 139 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 168th most-seen of the 284 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
July
In that month about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Checkered Woodpecker in Iberá National Park on a given day, against under 5% in January, April and October, the lowest months. That is one of Iberá National Park's driest months, with about 70 mm of rain against 180 mm in October.
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.
3rd of 5
Of the 5 parks where we can rate Checkered Woodpecker sightings, Iberá National Park ranks 3rd at about 10%. The best odds are in El Impenetrable National Park (Argentina, about 40%) and El Palmar National Park (Argentina, about 10%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Checkered Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in Iberá National Park (139 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.
