Arrowhead Piculet / Guyanadwergspecht

Arrowhead Piculet (Picumnus minutissimus)

Pictures (click on them to enlarge)
endemic species © Foek Chin Joe	© Foek Chin Joe	© Foek Chin Joe
© Erik Toorman	© John S. Dunning	© Candy McManiman
© Ricardo van Dijk	© Martin Reid	© Martin Reid
© Paul van Giersbergen	© Jan Hein Ribot	© Dominiek Plouvier
our only endemic species © Rutger Lem	© Jan Dolphijn	flies from nest with young © Alaisa Schipper
White-barred piculet in French Guiana © Pascal Dubois

A small woodpecker (length 10 cm) with a red forehead (only the male as in the first picture, then follows a female and then the rest of the family) and a white, scaled belly. You see them on trees everywhere in the coastal aera. In gardens with trees and bushes around Paramaribo this is the most common woodpecker. But curiously enough, there is no hard evidence of this piculet from Guyana. And also from French Guyana there seems to be no observation. I once saw an Arrowhead piculet in New Nickerie, just across the Corantyne river from Guyana. That is the western end of its distribution and the Corantijn its eastern border

and this makes it an endemic for Suriname, the only one.

These piculets often forage in small groups, looking for insects. Just like other woodpeckers they will make their nest by pecking a hole in a soft, rotten tree.
A recording gives the high sound of the Arrowhead /Guyanan Piculet and there is a second one, both made by Otte Ottema in Suriname.
The resembling species in Guyana is the white-bellied piculet, the one for French Guyana is portrayed as the last photo, the White-barred Piculet, photographed by Pascal Dubois just across the border with Suriname.
The three foto's above of a family at a sleeping hole that might have been used as a nesting hole, were made by Foek Chin Joe near Ma Retraite in Paramaribo in November 2006. Then a photo by Erik Toorman, made on the campus of the Anton de Kom University in Paramaribo, a picture by J.S. Dunning, made in Suriname around 1980 and a picture made by Candy McManiman in the Peperpot plantation near Paramaribo. From the same district a picture by Ricardo van Dijk in February 2009. A female and a male were seen by Martin Reid.
A video shows a hammering piculet, it was made by Ribot in Lelydorp in December 2015. A second video of a bird at the nest was made end November 2022 by Alaisa Springer in Par'bo. It is rather large: 18 MB.

Birdsounds (click on them to listen)
Sound recording of a Arrowhead Piculet © Otte Ottema, bird guide	Sound recording of a Arrowhead Piculet © Otte Ottema, bird guide

Video (click the link or the 'play'-button to see)
Video recording of a Arrowhead Piculet © ;	Video recording of a Arrowhead Piculet © ;

Distribution

Each small square indicates the observation of at least one (group) of these birds, the medium ones at least four observations on different days and the largest ones ten or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest.
Not all places in Suriname have been equally often visited by birders, so the distribution of the squares gives an indication of the whereabouts of the birds, but also of the birders. Some places deep in the south have no reported bird observations, by experienced birders, within 60 kilometer.

Abundance in different areas
coastal zone (blue dots on the map) :
northern savannas (yellow dots (in the north)) :
rainforest under 400 m (red dots) :
rainforest above 400 m (red dots) :
Sipaliwini savanna (yellow dots (in the south)) :
A blank is shown if not convincingly reported in the zone. Data interpreted by Arie Spaans, Otte Ottema and Jan Hein Ribot.

Names
Scientific name:	Picumnus minutissimus
Order:	Piciformes
Family:	Picidae, 19 in Suriname
Dutch:	Guyanadwergspecht
English:	Arrowhead Piculet
Sranan ('Surinamese'):
Guyana:
Papiamento:
Spanish (Venezuela):
Portugese (Brazil):
Arowak:
Carib:	Soewa soewa
French:	Picumne de Cayenne

Observations through the year	Observations of breeding through the year

The 517 reported observations of this bird in Suriname, mainly for the last 50 years up to 2018, have been grouped by month. More birds on one day are counted as one observation. Of course, if the graph should depict the total number of birds seen, the differences between the months could be much more pronounced.	The 24 reported breeding observations of this bird in Suriname. Most observations are about nest with eggs, some about fledglings, or feeding at a nest or the building of a nest. Of the about 5000 nests and eggs found for all species together, about 1/3 comes from the egg collection of Penard between 1896 and 1905. For some reason most collecting then was done in the first half of each year, so the shown distribution does not necessarily reflect the actual breeding preferences. The main dry season in Suriname is reckoned to be from half August to the end of November, the main wet season from half April to half August, but the the timing of begin and end does vary from year to year. Around March a second dry season often occurs.

Observations through the year

Observations of breeding through the year

The 517 reported observations of this bird in Suriname, mainly for the last 50 years up to 2018, have been grouped by month. More birds on one day are counted as one observation. Of course, if the graph should depict the total number of birds seen, the differences between the months could be much more pronounced.

The 24 reported breeding observations of this bird in Suriname. Most observations are about nest with eggs, some about fledglings, or feeding at a nest or the building of a nest.

Of the about 5000 nests and eggs found for all species together, about 1/3 comes from the egg collection of Penard between 1896 and 1905. For some reason most collecting then was done in the first half of each year, so the shown distribution does not necessarily reflect the actual breeding preferences.
The main dry season in Suriname is reckoned to be from half August to the end of November, the main wet season from half April to half August, but the the timing of begin and end does vary from year to year. Around March a second dry season often occurs.

Last update: September 2024 by Jan Hein Ribot. Please mail your comments, photos to: jhribot ( residing at ) gmail (point!) com.
observations can be uploaded to suriname.observation.org or ebird.org ).