Common Flameback

The Common Flameback is a mid-sized woodpecker of Southeast Asian lowlands, named for the warm golden sheen across its back and wing coverts. It is one of several closely related 'flameback' woodpeckers found across the region, and it typically outnumbers its relatives in gardens, plantations, and forest edge rather than deep interior forest.

Its golden back combined with a scarlet rump makes it a distinctive, easily learned species once the key field marks are known.

• Back and wing-covert feathers are golden-olive with a faint dusky shaft streak, giving a warm metallic look in good light
• Rump feathers are bright red, a key point separating this species from the Black-rumped Flameback, whose rump is black
• Wing flight feathers show alternating black and gold barring along the vane
• Facial feathers are strongly patterned: a broad black stripe through the eye and a bold black malar stripe stand out against white cheeks
• Tail feathers are stiff and blackish, reinforced along the shaft for bracing against tree trunks

Males show a crimson-tipped crown, while females have an all-black crown finely spotted with white, the main way to sex this species in the hand or from a clear photo of head feathers. Juveniles are duller overall, with softer, less crisply defined barring on the back and a browner wash to the head. Adults undergo a single complete molt following the breeding season.

• Resident across mainland Southeast Asia and much of the Sunda region, including Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo
• Favors lowland and foothill forest edge, mangrove fringes, wooded gardens, and plantations rather than closed-canopy interior forest
• Non-migratory; pairs typically hold a home range year-round

Common Flamebacks forage along trunks and larger branches, probing loose bark for wood-boring beetle larvae and ants, and will also drop to the ground to feed at ant nests. They drum in short, even bursts and give a sharp, rattling or whinnying call in flight or when alarmed. Nests are excavated as a fresh cavity in a dead trunk or large dead branch, often reused in following seasons by other cavity-nesting species once vacated.