RoseCrownedFruitDove.jpgAugust is probably my favorite month! To start it out on a jaunty note, I wanted to find the most colorful pigeon out of all the many Columbidae.  Now, as it turns out, there are a lot of beautiful tropical doves with tutti-fruity plumage, but one special candidate seemed like the clear winner. Allow me to present the rose-crowned fruit dove (Ptilinopus regina), a green dove with an orange belly, saffron eyes, a white-gray head and thorax, and a beautiful magenta crown (edged with yellow).  Wow!


The rose-crowned fruit dove is a gentle fructivore which lives in lowland rainforests of northeast Australia, and various tropical islands of southern Indonesia.   The female lays a single white egg in a nest hidden in the dense canopy and both parents look after it.  Nestlings are solid green and do not develop the brilliant splashes of color until they reach adulthood.


Rose-crowned fruit dove (Ptilinopus regina) from (photo by Joy)

I sort of hoped to tell some amazing anecdote about this lovely animal, but I could not find any. Apparently the bird’s brilliant plumage seamlessly blends into the vine and flower filled jungles where it lives. People rarely see it at all and are most familiar with the bird from its cries or from the noise it makes when it fumbles and drops a delicious fig.   Just based on looks alone, though, it was still worth writing about!