The Syrian woodpecker was first described as Picus syriacus by Wilhelm Hemprich and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1833, from a specimen collected on Mount Lebanon.

The upper parts of the male are glossy black, with a crimson spot on the nape and white on the forehead, sides of the face and neck.

It differs from the smaller lesser spotted woodpecker by the crimson on the abdomen and the white shoulder-patches.

[3] When hidden by the foliage, the Syrian woodpecker's presence is often advertised by the mechanical drumming, a vibrating rattle, produced by the rapidly repeated blows of its strong bill upon a trunk or branch.

During the ascent it taps the bark, breaking off fragments, but often extracts its prey from crevices with the tip of its sticky tongue.

The Syrian woodpecker attacks polyethylene pipes of both sprinkler and drip irrigation systems in Israel [Moran, S. 1977.

The neat, round 5 cm diameter nesting hole, is bored in soft or decaying wood horizontally for a few inches, then perpendicularly down.

At the bottom of the shaft, a small chamber is excavated, where up to 11 creamy white eggs are laid on wood chips.