Veniliornis mixtus
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~30%
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 |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Checkered Woodpecker sighting in Serra da Canastra National Park on a given day, based on 23 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 204th most-seen of the 294 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 30%, if each day is a fresh chance.
March, May and July–August
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Checkered Woodpecker in Serra da Canastra National Park on a given day, against under 5% in April, June and September–February, the lowest months. Those are among Serra da Canastra National Park's driest months, with about 60 mm of rain a month against 280 mm in January.
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.
4th of 5
Of the 5 parks where we can rate Checkered Woodpecker sightings, Serra da Canastra National Park ranks 4th at under 5%. The best odds are in El Impenetrable National Park (Argentina, about 40%), El Palmar National Park (Argentina, about 10%) and Iberá 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 Serra da Canastra National Park (23 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.
