Black-dotted piculet Foraging birds may repeat the song a few times and then fall silent for several minutes. Birds of this species forage in pairs, often widely separated, or alone. They occasionally join mixed-species flocks. They often "hitch sideways along branches," and they peck or drill like woodpeckers in rotting wood and at broken ends of branches. The taxonomy of "Picumnus" is controversial, and this taxon has been considered conspecific with the white-bellied piculet, conspecific with the golden-spangled piculet, and a synonym (incorrect name) of a subspecies of the scaled piculet ("P. squamulatus obsoletus"). Here it is considered a separate species following
White-barred piculet with several other species of piculet where their ranges overlap; these include the varzea ("P. varzeae") along the Amazon River, the ochre-collared ("P. temminckii") in southeastern Brazil, the ocellated ("P. dorbignyanus") in Bolivia, and the white-wedged piculet ("P. albosquamatus"), also in Bolivia. The white-barred piculet is between long. The sexes differ in that the male has red streaks or a solid red patch on the fore-crown, while the female lacks this. The rest of the crown is black, speckled with white. The upper parts of the body are tan or olive-brown, faintly barred with white, and the main flight feathers