Golden-cheeked Woodpecker—spotted in Mexico

 

We saw several Golden-cheeked Woodpeckers (Melanerpes chrysogenys) while we were in Mexico in February. This one is a male and was photographed near San Blas.

Like the Black-throated Magpie-Jay we also saw in the same part of western Mexico, it was named by Nicholas Vigors from a specimen collected by the expedition led by Frederick William Beechey (1796-1856) on board HMS Blossom. I have no doubt their bird was shot during the ship’s short stay in San Blas in December 1827.

A Mexico endemic, the Golden-cheeked Woodpecker occurs in woodland on the Pacific side of the country. Considered common and widespread within its range, it was greeted with delight as a ‘cracking woodpecker’.

Vigors NA, 1839. Ornithology. pp. 13–40. In: Richardson J, Vigors NA, Lay GT, Bennett ET, Owen R, Gray JE, Buckland W,  Sowerby GB. The Zoology of Captain Beechey’s Voyage; compiled from the collections and notes made by Captain Beechey, the officers and naturalist of the expedition, during a voyage to the Pacific and Behring’s Straits performed in His Majesty’s Ship Blossom, under the command of Captain F.W. Beechey, R.N., F.R.S. &c &c in the years 1825, 26, 27 and 28: i–xii, 1–180. London.

Snakes, Drugs and Rock ’N’ Roll. My Early Years. Romulus Whitaker with Janaki Lenin. HarperCollins, India. 2024

 

I first heard of Rom Whitaker in the late 1970s. He was in process of becoming established as the mover and shaker in the study and conservation of reptiles in India. This book is a frank account of his early life and of how, born in New York in 1943, he first went with his family to India where he was schooled, returned to the USA as a snake-mad youth, served in the US Army as a medical lab technician, sailed the world as a merchant seaman to make money (of which he was always short) and then moved back to India.

The title of the book, Snakes, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll. My Early Years, saves everything you need to know about the book before pressing the ‘buy now’ button. Importantly, it describes the exploits of reptile-mad young men and women in the light of what constituted amateur and commercial herpetology in the USA in the decades towards the latter half of the 20th century.