A small woodpecker of Colombia and Venezuela, found in forest edges, secondary growth, and gallery forest.
It is about 8–9.2 cm long, with finely black-and-white marked head feathers, olive-brown scaling above, and white scaling below. Males have red on the forecrown.
It occurs in gallery forest, edges, second growth, and open woodland, searching for small insects alone or in pairs.
A bird survey in Venezuela’s Orinoco Delta and San Juan River estuary listed the taxon under the older name P. nigropunctatus and described it as restricted locally to mangroves, swamp forest and herbaceous wetlands. This is a habitat record, not a study of feeding behavior or its frequency.
The type described under the older name P. nigropunctatus was reported in a 2014 specimen review as yellowish below, with black spots on the chest and abdomen. The specimens compared in that study ranged from pale birds with few spots to more yellow, heavily spotted birds, without a geographic pattern to the variation.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.