Picus canus
The grey-headed woodpecker, also known as the grey-faced woodpecker, is a Eurasian member of the woodpecker family, Picidae. Along with the more commonly found European green woodpecker and the Iberian green woodpecker, it is one of three closely related species found in Europe. Its distribution also stretches across large parts of the central and Eastern Palaearctic, all the way to the Pacific Ocean and south to the Himalaya and the Malay Peninsula.

Dion Art · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- gray-headed woodpeckerPBDB
- Sits inside
- PicusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Picidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Picidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Picidae
Time the record covers
At most 763 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Picus canus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
3 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Picus canus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Picus canus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
52 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Anatidae2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Aythya nyroca2 sites
- Corvidae2 sites
- Crex crex2 sites
- Lyrurus tetrix2 sites
- Passeriformes2 sites
- Perdix perdix2 sites
- Tetrao urogallus2 sites
- Aegypius monachus1 site
- Alaudidae1 site
- Anas1 site
- Anser albifrons1 site
- Anser anser1 site
- Asio otus1 site
- Buteo buteo1 site
- Buteo lagopus1 site
- Clanga clanga1 site
- Columba palumbus1 site
- Corvus monedula1 site
- Coturnix coturnix1 site
- Cygnus cygnus1 site
- Erithacus rubecula1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Picus canus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
3 references- Avian fossil assemblages at the onset of the LGM in the eastern Alps: A palaecological contribution from the Rio Secco Cave (Italy)1
- The fossil bird associations from the early Middle Pleistocene of the Ragusa province (SE Sicily, Italy)1
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)1
Each of the 3 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Picus canus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dion Art
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Picus canus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPicus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gmelin 1788