Claret-breasted Fruit-Dove
Ptilinopus viridis
A small green dove with a diagnostic burgundy breast patch, a gray head, a pale gray shoulder patch, and spots on the wings. Some females lack the unique vinous breast patch. Duller juveniles show some yellow fringing on the wings. Typically found singly or in pairs in lowland and hill forest as well as in plantations and some wooded patches. Gray shoulder patch and wing spots of female separates her from female White-breasted Fruit-Dove. Cooing song varies geographically; on mainland New Guinea it is a two-noted “coop-coOW.”
Identification
The claret-breasted fruit dove is 20–21 cm (7.9–8.3 in) in length. The plumage is mainly green apart from a well-defined patch of dark red-brown feathers on the throat and upper breast. The face and forecrown are bluish grey and shoulder has a bluish grey patch.
Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the claret-breasted fruit dove in his six volume Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on Ambon Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. He used the French name La tourterelle verte d'Amboine and the Latin Turtur viridis amboinensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the claret-breasted fruit dove which he placed with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Columba viridis and cited Brisson's work. The specific name viridis is the Latin word for "green". This fruit dove is now placed in the genus Ptilinopus that was introduced in 1825 by the English naturalist William John Swainson.<p>Six subspecies are recognised:
- Scientific name
- Ptilinopus viridis
- Authority
- (Linnaeus, 1766)
- Order
- Columbiformes
- Family
- Columbidae
- Genus
- Ptilinopus
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
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