[3] The checkered woodpecker was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[4] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.

[5] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Picus mixtus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.

In 2006, Moore et al. published research on mtDNA COI and Cyt b sequences which suggested that the two belong in genus Veniliornis.

[12] The generic name combines the name of the Roman deity Venilia with the Ancient Greek word ornis meaning "bird".

Adults of both sexes of the nominate subspecies V. m. mixtus have a blackish-brown forehead and crown, a blackish-brown hindneck, and a generally white face with a dark brown stripe back from the eye and a thin dark brown malar stripe.

[11] Subspecies V. m. berlepschi is similar to the nominate, but its brown parts are somewhat darker, the patch behind the eye is larger, and its underparts are a purer white.

[14] V. m. malleator and V. m. berlepschi, which inhabit more arid habitat, have darker and more prominent underside patterning, whereas the other two subspecies which are birds of mesic or riparian woodland are paler overall.

[11] Checkered woodpeckers in parts of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso are there only between January and May, but nothing else is known about their movements or those of other populations.

[11] Checkered woodpeckers forage singly and in pairs, usually on small branches of bushes and trees.