Columbids of the world

Has Anyone Ever Crossed a Turtle Dove with a Pigeon? 🕊️🤔#TurtleDove #PigeonCross #RacingPigeons #BirdBreeding PigeonBreeding

This pigeon looks like it was dusted with soft pink paint.

The Pink-spotted Pigeon lives in forests and woodlands of eastern and southern Africa, where its gentle brown plumage is marked with delicate pink spots around the neck. It feeds on seeds, fruits, and small plants on the forest floor.

A soft-colored wanderer of the woodlands, yet one of Africa’s most elegant pigeons.

Pink-spotted Pigeon 👇

How animals sense Earth’s magnetic field is one of biology’s enduring mysteries.

Researchers in Science have now identified superparamagnetic macrophages in the livers of rock pigeons to be crucial for magnetic sensing. The finding uncovers an unexpected role for immune cells in sensory perception and may fundamentally change our understanding of animal navigation.

Learn more in this week's issue: https://scim.ag/4nWYnCT

The Passenger Pigeon Was the Most Abundant Bird in North America — 3 to 5 Billion Individuals. Migrating Flocks Took Days to Pass Overhead and Darkened the Sky. The Last One, Named Martha, Died in Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. She Was 29.

In 50 years, the most abundant bird that had ever existed was gone.

Ectopistes migratorius — the Passenger Pigeon — was by any measure one of the most extraordinary animals in the history of the Earth. Contemporary accounts describe migrating flocks 1.6 km wide and 500 km long, taking days to pass overhead, so dense that the sky turned dark at midday, the sound of their wings like thunder, their droppings falling like snow.

John James Audubon, watching a flock cross the Ohio River in 1813, wrote: "I cannot describe to you the effect of this cloud of pigeons. They were moving with the swiftness of a torrent, and from every direction they came...I counted the flocks as they passed, and gave up, for they were innumerable."

The commercial hunting began in earnest in the 1850s with telegraph and railroad. When a nesting site was located, hunters telegraphed to other hunters. Entire nesting colonies — sometimes covering 200 km² — were descend upon. Wagons full of dead pigeons were shipped to cities where Passenger Pigeon was sold as cheap food. Professional hunters used nets, poles, and flocks of trained pigeons as decoys. One New York market alone sold 18,000 birds per day.

The last large wild nesting: 1878 in Petoskey, Michigan. By 1900: wild Passenger Pigeons were functionally gone.

Martha — the last known individual — was born in captivity, lived at Cincinnati Zoo for 28 years as the species' sole survivor, and died September 1, 1914. She weighed 136 grams. Her body was immediately frozen in a block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian.

The most abundant bird. Gone in 50 years. By market hunting.

When the most abundant bird that ever existed could be driven to extinction in 50 years — and the mechanism was simply selling it for food — what does that tell us about the relationship between abundance and vulnerability?

A peek-a-boo White-winged Dove.