(BE) Pigeon & tit to identify (1 Viewer)

Hey,

I would like some help identifying two birds. Both were photographed in Belgium (near Antwerp).

The first one is some sort of pigeon, but books I own do not contain any information regarding this sort.
The first sighting was in May, but I've seen it several weeks later at the exact same spot. It was just sitting on a window sill alone.



The second one is a tit, but I'm not sure which sort exactly. Its chest and back are a pale yellow, while the rest is a mix of white and gray.
My first guess was that it's a blue tit with some sort of condition (e.g.: leucism). However it's not a single individual. I've seen at least two (maybe three) at the same time with a similar "pattern".
According to a book I own, blue tits sometimes mix with azure tits creating a pale looking offspring. I've not been able to find a photo of this though, so I'm not sure if this could be it?



EDIT: Was expecting the links to show up as images, but the IMG tags don't work, so I've added the pictures as attachments if anyone prefers (slightly lower resolution).

First one looks like a fancy breed domesticated pigeon (derived from Rock Dove). Second, I'd agree with leucistic Blue Tit; leucism can be heritable, so it may be a whole brood that is affected.

I took a peek at Wikipedia's list of pigeon breeds, and I think I got lucky right away:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archangel_pigeon

Thank you both!

About the Archangel pigeon; since this is a fancy pigeon normally kept for shows and the like, how likely is it to spot it out in the 'wild'?
It was sitting on a window sill like I mentioned before, but I don't think it was tame. It just seemed to be foraging for food in the planters there. When taking the picture it was actually pretty wary of my presence (and I wasn't even that close).

There is no true wild pigeon remotely like it anywhere close

Niels

True but as a group Pigeons are a truly beautiful group:t:

At present locally there is an all-White bird with dyed Orange wings - very striking...

Laurie -

Rikku said:

Thank you both!

About the Archangel pigeon; since this is a fancy pigeon normally kept for shows and the like, how likely is it to spot it out in the 'wild'?
It was sitting on a window sill like I mentioned before, but I don't think it was tame. It just seemed to be foraging for food in the planters there. When taking the picture it was actually pretty wary of my presence (and I wasn't even that close).

Click to expand...

Depends how you like your statistics. If we assume that this pigeon has escaped from its cage, the odds of its being found in the "wild" are nearly 100%. Where else would it be?

If instead you ask, given any pigeon found in the wild, what are the odds that it is an Archangel? Depends on how close you are to a fancy-pigeon keeper (probably very close), how many Archangel pigeons they keep (I have no idea) and how sloppy they are at locking their cage (probably not very), but possibly something like one in a few thousand.

If you just asked, given any pigeon found in the wild, what are the odds that it is some kind of fancy breed, well, there are lots of fancy breeds and some of them are bred in great numbers, in part because they are intentionally released all the time (for weddings and so forth). So at a wild guess, one in a few hundred.