Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) - A Forgotten Giant

Video clip from the Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Modified from the original posted on the Archosaurophilia Tumblr on April 9, 2015.

Although the sad tale of its cousin the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is well-known, the existence of another giant woodpecker which once resided on the same continent, spanning the Sierra Madre ranges of Mexico, is less well remembered. The Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) is, or at least was, the largest woodpecker in the world, a huge and stately bird of the mountains with a prominent crest. Habitat degradation of the forests in which it lived doomed this uncommon species to decline, and ultimately to disappear entirely. The dangerous situation involving cartel violence in the parts of that country which the woodpecker called home have prevented any large-scale investigations into its last haunts, leaving the possibility of its extinction ultimately a mystery.

The footage here was filmed by a Dr. William Rhein in Durango in 1956, and represents the last documented sighting of this species, and the only footage or photographic evidence. It shows a female crawling slowly up the trunk of a pine tree before flying away, never to be seen again.