Little woodpecker

The little woodpecker (Veniliornis passerinus) is a species of bird in the family Picidae, the woodpeckers, piculets, and wrynecks. It is found in a wide range of wooded habitats in a large part of South America east of the Andes, and generally common. Unlike other similar and comparably sized members of the genus Veniliornis, the little woodpecker lacks a contrasting yellow nape.
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the little woodpecker in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). He used the French name Le petit pic de S. Domingue and the Latin name Picus dominicensis minor.[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.[3]When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.[3] One of these was the little woodpecker. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Picus passerinus and cited Brisson's work.[4] Linnaeus mistakenly specified the type location as Dominica. This has been corrected to Cayenne in French Guiana.[5] The specific name passerinus is from Latin and means "sparrow like".[6] This species is now placed in the genus Veniliornis that was introduced by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1854.[7]
Category:Animals
Category:Creatures