I have been sorting through my pictures from my December trip to Sri Lanka. One of the highlights was the close views that I had of Red backed Woodpecker. This bird is interesting because it was recently declared a species in it's own right. Formerly it had been thought to be a sub-species of the Flame-backed Woodpecker. It is a bird only found in Sri-Lanka - therefore, and is an endemic species. These birds seem very fond of coconuts and two were in the garden regularly during my stay recently and I had great photo opportunities. I have discovered that it is possible to sperate the sexes and I dont think this has been illustrated by many people before, if at all. If you look at the photos you can see that just above the beak on the forehead, one bird has white spots on a black background and the other bird has red spots on the same black background. The white spotted bird is the female.
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