Dendropicos obsoletus
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The brown-backed woodpecker (Dendropicos obsoletus) is a species of bird in the woodpecker family Picidae. It is found in a belt across the savannah region of sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in the east. It is generally uncommon, but has a very large range and the population appears to be steady, so the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as being of "least concern".
The brown-backed woodpecker was described by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1829 under the binomial name Picus obsoletus. He specified the type locality as Senegambia. The specific epithet is from the Latin obsoletus meaning "plain" or "ordinary". Before the introduction of molecular phylogenetics the relationship to other woodpeckers was uncertain. In 1948 the American ornithologist James Peter placed the brown-backed woodpecker in the genus Dendrocopos in his Check-List of Birds of the World, and in 2013 it was assigned to its own genus Ipophilius by Edward Dickinson and Leslie Christidis in the fourth edition of the Howard and Moore Complete of the Birds of the World. The species is now placed in the...
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chinko Conservation Area | 🇨🇫 Central African Republic | |
| 2 | Mole National Park | 🇬🇭 Ghana | |
| 3 | Nairobi National Park | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 4 | Kidepo Valley National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 5 | Ngorongoro Conservation Area | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 6 | Murchison Falls National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nairobi | 🇰🇪 Kenya |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Brown-backed Woodpecker sighting in Mole National Park on a given day, based on 52 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 151st most-seen of the 266 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January–February, April and August
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Brown-backed Woodpecker in Mole National Park on a given day, against about 10% in March, May–June and September–December, the lowest months. July has too few records to rate.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Brown-backed 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.
Among the best
Of the 6 parks where we can rate Brown-backed Woodpecker sightings, Mole National Park ranks 2nd at about 10%, level with the leaders once rounded. The best odds are in Chinko Conservation Area (Central African Republic, about 10%).
Same genus: Dendropicos
The closest relatives of the Brown-backed Woodpecker that you can see in Mole National Park (genus Dendropicos) are African Grey Woodpecker (about 40%) and Cardinal Woodpecker (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Brown-backed Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in Mole National Park (52 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.
