Somehow we’ve made it all the way to August without featuring a pigeon this year. Subscribers who have been with me for a while know how unacceptable this is; because pigeons are ultimate, pigeons are life. So, to make amends, I am dishing up one hellava fancy pigeon, the Carunculated Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus granulifrons).
Like all fruit doves, this bird is handsome as heck, but it is also elusive as heck. They live only on the island of Obi in Indonesia, halfway between New Guinea and Borneo. When I went digging into the literature, I discovered that between 1980 and 2011 they had only been officially documented by ornithologists three times. Obi is a remote island, only reachable by ferry, but does host a lot of primary industry, including nickel mining and logging, so the dove’s home is getting rather degraded.
Now, we do get to learn a cool word though, ‘carunculated’. Looking at their picture, you’ve probably worked out what it refers to: that lumpy yellow growth at the base of their beak. Caruncle is a biological term for a fleshy growth, kinda like a carbuncle… except the words have no relation. Technically a Chicken’s wattle is a type of caruncle.
Sometimes it surprises me when I come across a kooky looking bird, only to learn that we know next to nothing about them. Why does it have a growth on its face? Does it serve any function? We know it probably isn’t sexually selected for as both males and females have it. So what’s the deal? We don’t know.
It seems strange that in our modern world someone hasn’t already tracked these coy cooing doves down and figured out what they’re about. But I guess that’s a good thing too, because it means there’s a lot of wonderful things left to discover. I hope one day some obscure academic writes a PhD on this obscure, odd looking bird. Preferably before we finish logging the bejesus out of their island.
In other birding news, The Guardian is once again running The Bird of the Year competition and there’s still time to submit your favourite Australian bird to feature on the short list ahead of the September vote.
And hey, if you want some bird trivia to break up the day, Bird Life Australia has a couple on their site.
22/08/2021
Bird of the Week 