Hemicircus canente
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
The heart-spotted woodpecker (Hemicircus canente) is a species of bird in the woodpecker family. It has a contrasting black and white plumage, a distinctively stubby body and a large wedge-shaped head making it easy to identify while its frequent calling make it easy to detect as it forage for invertebrates under the bark of the slender outer branches of trees. They move about in pairs or small groups and are often found in mixed-species foraging flocks. They have a wide distribution across Asia with populations in the forests of southwestern and central India which are slightly separated from their ranges in the Himalayas and Southeast Asia.
The heart-spotted woodpecker was described in 1832 by the French naturalist René Lesson from a specimen collected from Bago in Myanmar. He coined the binomial name Picus canente. The specific name is from Roman mythology: Canens was a sweet-voiced nymph, her husband was Picus. The species is now placed in the genus Hemicircus that was introduced in 1837 by the English naturalist William Swainson. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
A small, uniquely shaped, black and buff woodpecker with a... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Periyar National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Cat Tien National Park | 🇻🇳 Vietnam | |
| 3 | Khao Yai National Park | 🇹🇭 Thailand | |
| 4 | Kaeng Krachan National Park | 🇹🇭 Thailand | |
| 5 | Nagarhole National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Bandipur National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 7 | Mudumalai National Park | 🇮🇳 India |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Heart-spotted Woodpecker sighting in Nagarhole National Park on a given day, based on 142 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 141st most-seen of the 272 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.
February
In that month about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Heart-spotted Woodpecker in Nagarhole National Park on a given day, against under 5% in March–October and December, the lowest months. That is one of Nagarhole National Park's driest months, with about 10 mm of rain against 270 mm in July.
Between 4 and 7 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Heart-spotted Woodpecker sightings with a recorded time, and about 6 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is most active around dawn and dusk.
5th of 7
Of the 7 parks where we can rate Heart-spotted Woodpecker sightings, Nagarhole National Park ranks 5th at about 10%. The best odds are in Periyar National Park (India, about 20%), Cat Tien National Park (Vietnam, about 10%) and Khao Yai National Park (Thailand, about 10%).
Same family: Picidae
The closest relatives of the Heart-spotted Woodpecker that you can see in Nagarhole National Park (family Picidae, Woodpeckers) are Black-rumped Flameback (about 40%), Streak-throated Woodpecker (about 20%) and White-bellied Woodpecker (about 20%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Heart-spotted Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in Nagarhole National Park (142 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.
