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Updated India Estimates Left Rufous Woodpecker Trends Inconclusive

Rufous Woodpecker in a tree
Conservation · Population & status

The 2025 interim update to State of India’s Birds, published on Zenodo in May 2026, produced new national trend estimates for rufous woodpecker (Micropternus brachyurus), but neither estimate showed a clear directional change. The long-term abundance-index trend was −19.0%.

The current annual trend was estimated at +1.3% per year. Uncertainty around both estimates was broad enough that the numerical estimates are compatible with both declines and increases rather than demonstrating a definite national trend.

The estimated distribution range size in India was 510,987 km². The species is a resident associated with forests and plantations and remains in the Low conservation-priority category in the State of India’s Birds assessment.

The interim release recalculated distribution-range, long-term-trend and current-annual-trend values for 942 bird species using about 48 million eBird observations submitted across India through 31 May 2025. The trend values describe change in a reporting-based abundance index rather than a direct count of individual birds. The report’s categorical assessments were not changed in this numerical update.

Sources and image credit

  1. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2026). State of India’s Birds: Range, trends, and conservation status – 2025 interim update (Version 2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20036633

Image: Shiv's fotografia — wild Rufous Woodpecker photographed at Mahananda, West Bengal, India, 4 January 2016; Wikimedia Commons; representative species image; cropped to 16:9 · CC BY 4.0 · Source

About this content: This story was produced with AI assistance within an editorial workflow developed by Wildlife Vagabond. Editorial responsibility remains with Wildlife Vagabond.How AI is used

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