Antillean piculet Antillean piculet The Antillean piculet ("Nesoctites micromegas") is a species of bird in the woodpecker family Picidae. It is monotypic within the genus Nesoctites. The species is evolutionarily distinct from the other piculets and is afforded its own subfamily Nesoctitinae. It is endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. A fossil feather in amber attributed to the genus has been found in the Dominican Republic, showing that the ancestors of the species have been isolated on Hispaniola for at least 25 mya. The Antillean piculet occupies a number of different habitats within Hispaniola, including humid and dry "Pinus" and broadleaf
Piculet Piculet The piculets are a distinctive subfamily, Picumninae, of small woodpeckers which occur mainly in tropical South America, with just three Asian and one African species. Like the true woodpeckers, piculets have large heads, long tongues which they use to extract their insect prey and zygodactyl feet, with two toes pointing forward, and two backwards. However, they lack the stiff tail feathers that the true woodpeckers use when climbing trees, so they are more likely than their relatives to perch on a branch rather than an upright trunk. Their bills are shorter and less dagger-like than the true woodpeckers, so