Dendropicos fuscescens
Silhouette: Pepe Reigada · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~30%
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 |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Cardinal Woodpecker sighting in Virunga National Park on a given day, based on 19 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 198th most-seen of the 316 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.
January, May–June and October
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Cardinal Woodpecker in Virunga National Park on a given day, against under 5% in February–April, July–September and November–December, the lowest months.
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.
47th of 52
Of the 52 parks where we can rate Cardinal Woodpecker sightings, Virunga National Park ranks 47th at under 5%. 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%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Cardinal Woodpecker is recorded against all the birds logged in Virunga National Park (19 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.
