Appearance

Like several other species of large woodpeckers, the Magellanic Woodpecker exhibits a black and white plumage pattern. Males have a red straight crest and females a black face with a curly crest and red around the bill. The rest of the bird, both sexes alike, is black except for a white patch on the tertials, and inner webs of the secondaries and primaries, with black spots through the white in juvenile and sub-adult birds.

The Magellanic Woodpecker is the largest picid of South America and third largest among the Campephilus spp., after the Ivory-billed (C. principalis) and Imperial (C. imperialis) woodpeckers (Short 1970, Winkler and Christie 2002). The last two are extinct or near extinction due to habitat modification and over-hunting.

Magellanic Woodpecker is the only large woodpecker in its range and hence unmistakable. It resembles Ivory-billed Woodpecker (C. principalis) and Imperial Woodpecker (C. imperialis) in its white wing patches, although the white patches are smaller in magellanicus. The curled crest of the female is like that of the female of imperialis. Seven of the 11 Campephilus spp have light colored bills, but Magellanic Woodpecker and three other species in the genus have dark bills.

Data is mainly from Short (1970) and Ojeda (2004):

The species shows a noticeable sexual plumage dimorphism, which facilitates field studies. The dimorphism also involves other attributes such as bill size, which is a common feature among woodpeckers related to differences in feeding behavior, exploited substrates, and items consumed. Magellanic Woodpecker shows a bill shape typical of a generalist woodpecker and excavator rather than a broad scaling bill as in many other Campephilus. The tail has four strong rectrices, and the foot has a long fourth toe often hold pointing to the side and front, as in other Campephilus. Adult plumage is completely black with bluish sheen and white patch on the folded wings. Males have a red crest, head, and neck. Females have a curled crest and only have red around the base of the bill. In nestlings, at about 15 days old, the sexual dimorphism begins to be noticed in the head plumage. Juvenile plumage more or less matches that of adults, with some exceptions. The most noticeable age dependent plumage feature is the red/black pattern of the head. Male fledglings have red crest and malar and the rest of the head is black. These red areas progressively expand until the head is fully red 2–3 months after fledging. Fledgling females have a smaller and non-curled head crest, compared to adult females. After months 4–6, first year juveniles (both sexes) differ slightly from adults, the only prevalent distinctive feature is the black barring of the white wing patches, which sometimes still persists, though less conspicuous, during the first half of the second year of life. In both subadults and adults, is very common to find small black patches in the white wing patches.
 

No information.

Iris: yellow

Bill: black

Tarsi and toes: black

Data are from Chazarreta et al. (2009. Dimorfismo sexual en tamaño y su relación con el comportamiento de alimentación y el uso del hábitat en el Carpintero Gigante. RAO, Ornithological Conference, Tucumán, Argentina) and Short (1970).

Morphological features (Table) were obtained from preserved specimens of male and female Magellanic Woodpecker in the collections of several museums in Argentina and Chile.

Mass: mean adult males 338.4 g (range 312-363 g, n=7); mean adult females 291.3 g (range 276-312 g, n=6).