The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed it as a least-concern species.

The crown is olive-brown, and the nape is red in the male and blackish in the female.

[4] The beak is greyish, the legs are olive or grey, and the iris is chesnut.

[4] This woodpecker is found in the Upper Guinean forests of West Africa,[5] in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Its calls include a tinny trill, a series of rrek and rrak notes, b-ddddddd-d-it, br-r-r-r-r-r-r and zh-dzeeeep.