Dendropicos fuscescens
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~50%
The cardinal woodpecker (Dendropicos fuscescens) is a widespread and common resident breeder in much of sub-Saharan Africa. It occurs in a wide range of habitats, ranging from dense forest to thorn bush. It is fairly vocal and is easily identified by its call notes. The sexes are distinguishable by their head patterns. They feed primarily on tree-boring insects; using their adhering tongues they extract the insects from holes in wood or bark.
The cardinal woodpecker was formally described in 1818 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot under the binomial name Picus fuscescens. This woodpecker is now placed with 11 other sub-Saharan woodpeckers in the genus Dendropicos that was introduced by the French ornithologist, Alfred Malherbe in 1849. The word Dendropicos combines the Ancient Greek dendron meaning tree with pikos meaning woodpecker. The specific epithet fuscescens is Modern Latin for "blackish".
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2017 found that the cardinal woodpecker was sister to the speckle-breasted woodpecker (Dendropicos poecilolaemus). Nine subspecies are recognized. D. f... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kigali | 🇷🇼 Rwanda | |
| 2 | Yaoundé | 🇨🇲 Cameroon | |
| 3 | Harare | 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe | |
| 4 | Durban | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 5 | Brazzaville | 🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo | |
| 6 | Lilongwe | 🇲🇼 Malawi | |
| 7 | Pretoria | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 8 | Dar es-Salaam | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 9 | Lusaka | 🇿🇲 Zambia | |
| 10 | Johannesburg | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Cardinal Woodpecker sighting in South Luangwa National Park on a given day, based on 63 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 114th most-seen of the 257 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
In that month about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Cardinal Woodpecker in South Luangwa National Park on a given day, against under 5% in July, the lowest month. That is one of South Luangwa National Park's driest months, with about 5 mm of rain against 310 mm in January.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Cardinal 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.
27th of 52
Of the 52 parks where we can rate Cardinal Woodpecker sightings, South Luangwa National Park ranks 27th at about 10%. The best odds are in uMkhuze Game Reserve (South Africa, about 40%), Samburu National Reserve (Kenya, about 20%) and Meru National Park (Kenya, about 20%).
Same family: Picidae
The closest relatives of the Cardinal Woodpecker that you can see in South Luangwa National Park (family Picidae, Woodpeckers) are Bearded Woodpecker (about 10%), Bennett's Woodpecker (about 10%) and Golden-tailed Woodpecker (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Cardinal Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in South Luangwa National Park (63 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.
