Kaempfer’s Woodpecker

Kaempfer's woodpecker (Celeus obrieni), also known as the Piauí woodpecker and previously as the caatinga woodpecker, is a species of bird in subfamily Picinae of the woodpecker family Picidae. It is endemic to Brazil. == Taxonomy and systematics == The type specimen of Kaempfer's woodpecker, a female, was collected in the Brazilian state of Piauí in 1926. It was lodged in the American Museum of Natural History but was not formally described until 1973, when Lester Short classified it as a subspecies of the rufous-headed woodpecker (Celeus spectabilis). Short recognized that the specimen's plumage differs from that of the other two C. spectabilis subspecies, that the habitat in which the specimen was collected differed from that favored by C. spectabilis, and that its occurrence was separated by about 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from that of C. spectabilis. He noted that the full range of the new subspecies was unknown and suggested that C. spectabilis had in the past had a much larger range. What is now Kaepfer's woodpecker retained its classification as a subspecies until the early 2000s when regional and worldwide taxonomic systems recognized it as a full species based on the plumage and habitat differences and the huge…