mystery pigeon analysis

 mysterious and unknown members of the columbiformes family

    When we think of birds we usually immediately think of several examples, including common pigeons, These birds that populate the great metropolises of the world, living among the buildings even if you don't believe it, They make up one of the most extensive and dispersed clades of the avian family: the family Columbidae.

This family is dispersed across almost all continents, having representatives as famous as the common pigeon or the famous dodo, to less famous representatives such as Turkish pigeons or Japanese pigeons, But in this family there are mysterious members, who have not been verified or of whom there is almost no reliable record, leaving everything about them a mystery, thank you for reading, I hope you support and without further ado we begin.

Liverpool pigeon

  Scientifically named Caloenas maculata, it is a species of pigeon of undetermined origin and is known from a single specimen deposited in the National Museum of Liverpool believed to have been collected in French Polynesia, possibly Tahiti, between 1783 and 1823.

It reached a length of 32 cm, having plumage of a deep bottle green color and the neck was characterized by having elongated feathers, the wings being and the hind feathers dotted with whitish triangular spots and the terminal band of the tail was yellowish, Its length was about 22.5 cm and its tail was about 12.6 cm. Its eyes were apparently red, based on Latham's description and the red paint left on the specimen Liverpool.

The origin of the species and the causes of its extinction remain uncertain, scientists have proposed that this species lived on an island with few predators, Taking into account the small size of its wings, it is likely that it lived in a forest, based on its green coloration. Ornithologist David Gibbs has proposed that this bird could have been collected from a Pacific island, due to some stories told by natives of Tahiti in 1928 in which a green bird with white spots called "marmoset" was mentioned, which could very well have been this pigeon, Although this species is well recorded at a taxonomic level, I put it here because of the mystery of its case and its unknowns.

As a curiosity, BirdLife International added the Liverpool pigeon to the list of extinct species in 2008.

the black tylope of the Philippines 

  With the proposed scientific name ptilinopus arcanus, it is a species of pigeon native to Negros Island in the Philippines, described in 1955, based on a single specimen, a female collected near Pula, on the slopes of Mount Canlaón, at an altitude of 1,100 meters, which was shot dead, Although there was evidence of another specimen, possibly the male, that fled at the time of the shot, today the specimen is kept in the Peabody Museum at Yale University.

This was a small bird, measuring 16.5 cm, knowing only the appearance of the females, being mainly bright green in color, with a gray forehead, white throat and a yellow eye ring, as well as yellow edges on the wings and part of the tail.

Their behavior and almost everything about them is unknown, there have been no more sightings since their discovery, their taxonomic role being doubtful, some theorize that it is a hybrid or a mutation of a known species, although this is not widely accepted and is generally taken as a valid species, but until a male is found it cannot be given a favorable place at a taxonomic level.

La paloma perdiz de Tana en oceania

  With the scientific name Pampusana ferruginea, it is a species of pigeon from the island of Tanna, in Vanuatu, which is a mystery, since it is known from only two specimens and neither of them have been preserved. 

The best known was a female that was painted by Georg Forster at Tana during James Cook's second circumnavigation of the South Seas in August 1774, whose painting can be seen in the Natural History Museum in London, the fate of this specimen is unknown, the other specimen, a male, It belonged to the collection of Joseph Banks at the Natural History Museum in London and the circumstances of its acquisition and loss are also unknown. 

According to Forster's description, the female measured 27 cm, the head and chest of the female were reddish brown, her back had a dark red color and purple, its wings had a dark green tone with narrow grayish brown edges with the abdomen being gray, in the male, the forehead, the superciliary stripe and the lower part of the head, apart from the throat and breast, they were white, as in the nominal breed of the Tuamotu Partridge Pigeon, and its belly was reddish black, its beak was blackish and its eyes were yellowish and its legs were red.

When Forsters analyzed the crop of the dead specimen, he found that it contained wild nutmegs (Myristica inutilis), So they were looking for this type of trees in Tanga but without success. It was later determined that it was common in the island's forests but quite small, so it could easily go unnoticed, the date of its extinction is unknown, but it is assumed that the bird disappeared at the beginning of the 19th century. When Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg saw the female specimen on August 17, 1774, they shot it, the only vestiges of its existence, apart from the painting, it is Forster's annotation: «...After these fields we entered a forest [where] a pigeon of a new kind was shot..." so that. The cause of the species' extinction is unknown, but the introduction of rats and deforestation is the most likely.

The mysterious pigeons of Mauricio, reunion and Rodríguez 

   A good part of the cases occurred in these small islands in the Indian Ocean, these being the following 

Rodrigues's Turtle Dove 

  Scientific name nesoenas rodericanus, it lived on the Mascarean island of Rodriguez, it is known from a subfossil of the sternum and some other bones, and the descriptions of Leguat of 1708 and Julien Tafforet of 1726.

This bird was assigned to the genus Alectroenas, but this was erroneous, as it turned out to be more similar to the ground pigeons (Gallicolumba) or to a miniature version of the sternum of an imperial pigeon (Ducula), if this resemblance is not based on convergence, considering the evolutionary relationships of the dodo and Rodrigues' solitaire, The Rodrigues gray pigeon is quite possibly the closest relative of the Raphidae that was still alive in historical times, This does not mean that there is a close relationship between this bird and the didine pigeons, only that both derive, independently, from the same Indo-Asian lineage, which became extinct millions of years ago.

It was a bird the size of a tambourine dove and of a slate gray color, it is known that Leguat and his companions took a liking to these tame and confident birds and had several dozen of these birds attending their outdoor table at mealtime to wait for remains; They were especially fond of melon seeds; in 1693, the bird was found foraging on the island, but nested only on offshore islets that the rats that had been introduced sometime in the 17th century had not yet reached.

Two tarsometatarsi were attributed to this species; today, they are believed to represent another taxon, closer to the Madagascar tortoise pigeon (Nesoenas picturata), and therefore the name was coined for another taxon, leaving the original species in doubt.

Leguat said that these pigeons are little less than the sample and quite a slate color, these having the habit of building their nests on trees; Being so tame that they allowed themselves to be manipulated easily, if this species truly existed, it was surely a wonder to see them, but in the absence of valid remains and more records little or nothing can be known about them, leaving their existence a complete mystery.

pink Réunion pigeon 

   With the proposed scientific name Nesoenas mayeri duboisi, it is an extinct subspecies of pigeon that previously lived on the Mascarene island of Réunion, It is known from the description of a rusty red pigeon given by Dubois in 1674 and a single subfossil humerus that agrees with that of the Mauritius pink pigeon in generic characteristics, except that it is a little longer. Furthermore, Dubois's reference to the beak being red at the base and the eyes being surrounded by a red ring suggests that this possible subspecies was closely related to the Mauritius taxon.

According to Dubois, these were a little larger than the European pigeons, and had larger beaks, red at the end near the head, eyes surrounded by fiery color, like those of pheasants It was also said that there was a time when they were so fat that they had a flavor that neither wood pigeons nor European doves could have.

Since the Réunion rosy pigeon was only explicitly mentioned by Dubois, little can be said about its extinction, The last reports of native pigeons were by Père Bernardin in 1687 and by Guillaume Houssaye in 1689, although Alectroenas may have existed for a somewhat longer time, Jean Feuilley in 1705 mentioned that all native pigeons had become extinct; It seems likely that introduced rats and cats, combined with excessive hunting, were the causes of the extinction of the birds, it is a shame that given the limited information and remains, little is known about this incredible bird.

mysterious pigeons of Mauricio and Rodríguez 

  There are many mysterious pigeons on these islands, for example Rodriguez's blue pigeon, proposed name Alectroenas payandeei,  is an extinct species of blue pigeon that was endemic to Rodrigues Island only known from the tarsometatarsus holotype collected in 2005, associated with remains of a Rodrigues night heron and a Rodrigues rail, in addition to a femur described in 1879 but now lost it may also have belonged to the species. was not specifically mentioned by contemporary writers and, Therefore, it is unknown when it became extinct and its nature is unknown. 

Another example is the Mauritius wood pigeon, with the proposed name Columba thiriouxi, which is an extinct species that was endemic to Mauritius, whose holotype is a right tarsometatarsus collected in 1910 by Etienne Thirioux or the Mauritius turtle dove, Nesoenas cicur, whose holotype corresponds to a tarso-right metatarsus collected in 2008 in the southeast of the island of Mauritius, both species lack evidence to be described as such.

The Norfolk Partridge Pigeon, the most mysterious of all 

    It is an enigmatic species whose only testimony comes from Norfolk Island, in New Zealand.

The taxonomic position and validity of this species is controversial, since most information about the species comes from an illustration made by John Hunter. para el libro "Collection of 100 original watercolours of Birds, Flowers, Fishes and Natives done during 1788–1790 in New South Wales, placa n.º 89, con la descripción «Dove. Norflok Island».

 John Latham published the first scientific description of Columba norfolciensis in 1801, however, the name was also used to refer to the green-backed emerald dove and the white-backed dove and it cannot be confirmed that Latham's original description referred to the species illustrated by Hunter.

Due to the uncertain identity and confusing use of the name by Latham, the scientific name Columba norfolkensis was officially deleted by the ICZN in 2010, This view was followed by the IOC and IUCN who removed the taxon from their list of valid species in 2014, Joseph Forshaw introduced a new scientific name for the Norfolk Island partridge pigeon in 2015, Alopecoenas norfolkensis, although this one has not been widely used either.

It is a shame to see so many interesting species of pigeons and other birds that have been lost, let's hope one day these mysteries will be solved, otherwise we may never know the truth behind the nature of these mysterious doves.

[Reading links]

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesoenas_cicur

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritian_wood_pigeon

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampusana_ferruginea

https://www.google.com/search?q=ptilinopus+arcanus&oq=pti&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i60j69i57j69i59l2j0i512l4j0i10i512.1805j0j4&client=ms-android-tcl-rvo2a&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesoenas_cicur

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigues_blue_pigeon

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritian_wood_pigeon

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9union_pink_pigeon

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloenas_maculata