A medium-sized, pied woodpecker. Upperparts black, heavily barred white. Undertail red, breast und belly buffwith light flank barring and slight side streaking. Withish cheeks partly bordered by black line. Crown red in male with orange forehead, black in female.
^Fuchs, Jérôme; Ohlson, Jan I.; Ericson, Per G. P.; Pasquet, Eric (2007). "Synchronous intercontinental splits between assemblages of woodpeckers suggested by molecular data". Zoologica Scripta. 36 (1): 11–25. doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2006.00267.x. ISSN0300-3256. S2CID84724528.
^Sivaperuman, C.; Venkataraman, K. (2012). "Abundance and Species Distribution of Bird Communities in Ritchie's Archipelago, Andaman and Nicobar Islands". In Venkataraman, K.; Raghunathan, C.; Sivaperuman, C. (eds.). Ecology of Faunal Communities on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag. pp. 273–288. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-28335-2_18. ISBN978-3-642-28334-5.