Pheasant Pigeon

Alternative names: Magnificent Ground Pigeon, Magnificent Ground-Pigeon, Magnificent Pheasant-Pigeon, Noble Ground-Pigeon, Green-naped Pheasant-pigeon

Photo by mehdhalaouate
Taja, Papua, Indonesia
November 2004

Otidiphaps nobilis

Identification

42–50 cm, 16.5 - 19.7 inches; 500 g.

• Black head and short nuchal crest with green iridescence
• Iris orange to orange-red
• Orbital ring red
• Beak bright red, occasionally tipped orange
• Nape and upper hindneck iridescent green with a patch of gold or pink and purple below
• Mantle and back iridescent reddish purple turning chestnut on secondaries and outerwing coverts
• Lower back dark purple turning blueish on uppertail coverts
• Black breast glossed purple or blueish iridescence
• Black belly with glossy green shine
• Black pheasant-like tail with 20–22 feathers and green iridescence
• Yellowish Long thin legs bright red or purple knee and a thin red line down side of tarsus
• Sexes alike.
• Juvenile duller, mainly greyish black with dark reddish brown above with feathers retaining downy tips for a time

Distribution

New Guinea and nearby islands.

Taxonomy

Subspecies

There are 4 suspecies:^[1]

• O. n. nobilis

• Mountains of western New Guinea, Batanta and Waigeo islands

• O. n. aruensis has white hindneck, much less coppery nuchal area of mantle, greenish blue breast, slightly paler, less purple mantle and shorter crest

• Aru Islands New Guinea

• O. n. cervicalis has greyish-white hindneck, brown nuchal area of mantle, greenish blue rump and blackish-green underparts

• Mountains. of east and southeast New Guinea (Saruwaged, Sepik and Kuper)

• O. n. insularis has no crest ,no coloured nuchal patch, wings markedly paler reddish brown than in other subspecies, rump dull green, tail and uppertail-coverts dark blue, underparts matt black, with very little iridescence except slight amount of blue or green on breast

• Fergusson Island. (D'Entrecasteaux Archipelago)

Some authorities^[3] treat the four subspecies as separate species

Habitat

Mainly in hills up to 1900 m and in lowlands Usually occurs in primary rainforest but sometimes monsoon forest at lower altitudes.

Behaviour

Normally solitary, sometimes in pairs, acts like a pheasant. Resident and sedentary.

Diet

Eats seeds and fallen fruit, sometimes visits display grounds of Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise to search for regurgitated seeds and shows aggressive behaviour towards it. Injests pebbles up to 1 cm in diameter to help digestion. Forages by slow movement along the ground and is known to drink from streams.

Breeding

It is thought to nest on the ground and lay only a single egg.

Vocalisation

Advertising call is a far carrying loud “wu-huwoooaaa” that modulates in pitch with a trailing end. Call lasts 1.4–2 seconds and repeated about 8–10 seconds or more. Male display calls are a “woooou” rising in the middle, and a screeching “crrouwwwwwww”, starting very loudly and lasts about 5 seconds. Calls from perch in the undercanopy and ground.

References

1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2015. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2015, with updates to August 2015. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
2. Avibase
3. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved November 2015)

• List of references

Recommended Citation

• BirdForum Opus contributors. (2024) Pheasant Pigeon. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 24 April 2024 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Pheasant_Pigeon

External Links

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