Varzea piculet Varzea piculet The varzea piculet ("Picumnus varzeae") is a species of bird in the family Picidae, the woodpeckers, piculets, and wrynecks. It is endemic to Brazil's Amazon basin where it occurs in seasonally flooded Várzea forests, which gives the bird its common name. Its natural habitat is tropical moist lowland forest, and as the trees are progressively being cleared in the Amazon basin, the population of the bird is declining, and as a consequence, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated it as an "endangered species". This species was first described in 1912 by the German-Brazilian ornithologist Emilie
Varzea piculet with white speckles. The upper parts of the body are chocolate-brown, sometimes with an olive tinge, and occasionally slightly barred with black. The tail is deep brown apart from the central pair of feathers, which are whitish, and the two outer pairs of feathers which have a whitish bar near the tip. The underparts are some shade of brown with light barring and streaking in darker brown and white. The iris is brown, the beak is black and the legs and feet are bluish-grey. The juvenile is similar to the female but the underparts are more heavily barred. This piculet