The Guayaquil woodpecker is long and weighs . Both sexes' upperparts are black from their neck to upper back; their lower back to the uppertail coverts is barred with whitish buff and blackish. Their neck has white stripes on the side that continue onto the upper back and meet as a "V". Their wings' upper surface is brownish black to black; the flight feathers are browner with small cinnamon or buff spots on their inner webs. The underside of the wings' feathers are white with brown tips and trailing edges and pale cinnamon bases on the primaries. Their tail is dark brown to black-brown. Their throat and upper breast are black and the rest of their underparts whitish buff to pale cinnamon-buff with browish black bars. Adult males have an entirely red head with a small black and white spot on the ear coverts. Adult females do not have the covert spot. They do have a wide creamy stripe with black edges that extends from the bill to the ear coverts and bends down to meet the white neck stripe. The adult's bill is a long grayish chisel with a paler mandible, their iris pale yellow, and their legs gray-brown to greenish gray. Juveniles resemble adults but have less barring on the rump and underparts; males' heads resemble the adult female's and females have more black than they do as adults.Winkler, H. and D. A. Christie (2020). Guayaquil Woodpecker (Campephilus gayaquilensis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.guawoo2.01 retrieved February 8, 2023
