[Mark Lee]

These were taken in October of last year in the the Mentawais in Indonesia. The dove had a silvery sheen, but may have been the light and it was flying by pretty quick. Sorry the resolution isn't better. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks, Mark

[Hanno]

Looks like a Pied Imperial Pigeon to me, but then I don't even know if those are actually present on Mentawais.

[tunpin.ong]

Originally Posted by Mark Lee

These were taken in October of last year in the the Mentawais in Indonesia. The dove had a silvery sheen, but may have been the light and it was flying by pretty quick. Sorry the resolution isn't better. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks, Mark

Dear Mark,
Do you have other shots or close up, especially in the eye area?
Attached is a link to Pied Imperial Pigeon in Sulawesi
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search...lt&Bird_ID=746
Can you confirm if there is any bare skin around the eye in your photo?
In the typical Pied Imperial Pigeon, the is no bare skin around the eye and the eye should appear as a black dot surrounded by white feathers around the eye.
Other features also include the depth of the black tail band. The bird in your photo seems to have a narrower band. Is that true?

Could you also let us know which island in Mentawai group that you saw this bird? The islands west of Sumatra are seldom visited by ornithologists.

Thanks.

[Mark Lee]

I believe I took these photos near the Island of Siberut. I couldn't get a better resolution photo. Thank you for help.
Mark

[Rasmus Boegh]

In all likelyhood a Pied Imperial Pigeon, but there's a tiny chance for the near-extinct Silvery Wood Pigeon (which presumably is what Tun Pin was getting at with the previous post). What I can say is that the first photo in post #4 looks like an entirely different species, the Green Imperial Pigeon.

[tunpin.ong]

Originally Posted by Rasmus Boegh

In all likelyhood a Pied Imperial Pigeon, but there's a tiny chance for the near-extinct Silvery Wood Pigeon (which presumably is what Tun Pin was getting at with the previous post). What I can say is that the first photo in post #4 looks like an entirely different species, the Green Imperial Pigeon.

Hi Rasmus,
My first thought has to be a Pied Imperial Pigeon also. But I thought typical Pied Imperial Pigeon should have its black patch on tail extending all the way along the left and right most tail feather. Where the bird in the photo has the tail narrowly tipped with black.

My only experience with Silvery Wood Pigeon was in Dec 2001 a very old stuffed specimen displayed at Sarawak Museum in Kuching, Malaysia where it was placed beside PIP in a glass display chamber and did not come with any inscription!! The differences were its bare skin around eye, simple narrower black tipped tail, and some subtle differences in extensiveness of the black wing. Other details of color cannot be reliably analysed for a very old specimen.

If only we have someone very familiar with PIP. I am trying to get hold of someone in Singapore as PIP has been found as feral there.

Regards,
Tun Pin

[Rasmus Boegh]

Originally Posted by tunpin.ong

My first thought has to be a Pied Imperial Pigeon also. But I thought typical Pied Imperial Pigeon should have its black patch on tail extending all the way along the left and right most tail feather. Where the bird in the photo has the tail narrowly tipped with black.

My only experience with Silvery Wood Pigeon was in Dec 2001 a very old stuffed specimen displayed at Sarawak Museum in Kuching, Malaysia where it was placed beside PIP in a glass display chamber and did not come with any inscription!! The differences were its bare skin around eye, simple narrower black tipped tail, and some subtle differences in extensiveness of the black wing. Other details of color cannot be reliably analysed for a very old specimen.

To me it looks as if most, at least 1/2, of the distal part of the (visible) tail appears black in the birds discussed here. This can be seen on the 2nd close-up in post #4, where it is easier to judge than in the small photos in the first post, where one easily can be mislead to thinking that the tail-coverts are a part of the tail (as already noted in my previous post, the 1st photo in post #4 shows a Green Imperial P. and should therefore not be included in this).

It is some time since I've seen Pied, but what can be seen on the photos discussed in this thead looks fine for Pied to me. It should be noted that we're speaking about the "strict" nominate Pied here, not the Torresian or for that matter "melanura" Pied, which easily can be discounted on range alone. Based on a fast check of photos, nominate Pied has ~2/3 distal part of the uppertail black (+ outer webs of outer rectrices, i.e. would appear roughly 2/3 from the side, too), while it is less from below, between 1/4 and 1/3 of the distal part, where there often is a suggestion of an "edge" in the central part of the undertail (due to the more extensive black to the central rectrices). I have been able to locate very few (well, two captives) photos of the Silvery, a species I, for rather obvious reasons, have absolutely no real life experiance with, and for this reason a thorough judgement of the amount of black typical (or for that matter intraspecific variations) in the tail of that species is not possible. However, assuming the birds visible on these photos are typical, they indicate it has more (not less) black to the underside of the tail than in the nominate Pied, and this seems to be supported by various books. However, they don't seem to show the black edge to the outer web of the outer rectrices, and consequently it would probably appear as if it had slightly less black from the side/above than in the Pied. Nevertheless, this difference is rather marginal. This, too, is supported by the various books I have checked, which states that the Silvery has approximately the same amount of black on all tail-feathers unlike the nominate Pied.

Anyhow, to sum it up, I still end up with almost certainly Pied for the bird discussed in this thread, but with a tiny chance of Silvery.

[tunpin.ong]

Judging the black band on the underwing along the primaries to the secondaries, the bird in the photo seems to have a narrow black band, running quite parallel along secondaries to part of primaries.

I found 2 examples of Pied Imperial Pigeons showing underwing pattern in flight.
One taken in Queensland, Australia (This may be disputed as it is of another form)
One possibly taken in islands around Singapore.

http://flickr.com/photos/mrtroy/3081089088/
http://flickr.com/photos/38396164@N00/2823860337/

In both examples of PIP we can see that the black pattern on underwing is quite different from Mark's photo. Those typical Pied Imperial Pigeon has black patch very extensive in primary and gradually becomes narrow towards tertial. Hence in joining area between Primaries and Secondaries, the black feather occupies at least half of the underwing.

I do not have many reference with me, but this underwing feature is also consistant with Pied Imperial Pigeon featured in Craig Robson's Birds of South-East Asia

Looking back in Mark's photo, the black feather is very narrow, only occupies about a quarter of underwing in areas between primaries and secondaries.

I know that the western islands of Sumatra have many distinct forms of birds that are slightly different from the rest of Southeast Asia. So wonder if the Pied Imperial Pigeon there is also slightly different.

[antshrike69]

The underwing pattern is certainly interesting, although Silvery should show a similar pattern to 'classic' PIP with the undersides of all the flights black contrasting with the creamy underwing coverts. I've not seen any reference to geographical or sex/age-related variation in this feature in PIP.