Speckle-chested piculet Speckle-chested piculet The speckle-chested piculet ("Picumnus steindachneri") is a species of bird in the family Picidae (woodpeckers) endemic to Peru. Its natural habitats are tropical moist lowland and montane forests. It is threatened by habitat destruction as the forests are cleared to make way for agricultural land, and the IUCN has rated it as being an endangered species. This is a small species growing to a length of . It is mainly grey, black and white, the upper parts being greyish-brown speckled and barred with white or buff, the throat being whitish and the breast being black with white tear-drop
Piculet of pronounced morphological similarities, but the two "Picumnus" lineages, despite having diverged long ago, are virtually alike except for head coloration (Fuchs "et al.", 2006). The Antillean piculet ("Nesoctites micromegas") has proven to be a very distinct species evolutionarily between piculets and woodpeckers (Benz "et al.", 2006) and thus is nowadays placed in a subfamily of its own. The arrangement of species in the genera follows del Hoyo "et al." (2002). Genus "Picumnus" Genus "Verreauxia" (sometimes included in "Sasia") Genus "Sasia" Piculet The piculets are a distinctive subfamily, Picumninae, of small woodpeckers which occur mainly in tropical South America, with