This woodpecker ranges from Sierra Leone to Ghana, southern Nigeria, and southwestern Cameroon. It uses open forest, clearings, edges, gallery forest, and swamp forest.
Males have an olive-brown forehead and crown, a red nape, a thin white eyebrow, white sides to the neck, and a broad white facial stripe.
It forages in the canopy, gleaning and probing for insects, ants, and beetle larvae rather than hammering or pecking at bark.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.