Blue-headed Quail-Dove

Appearance

This bird has a mainly cinnamon-brown body with a bright blue crown, black eye stripe, white facial stripe, and a black gorget narrowly bordered with white markings and blue mottling on the sides. 30–33 cm in length.

Range and habitat

This species is endemic to Cuba. Its natural habitat is lowland forests and swampy areas. It can occasionally be found in highland forests.

The blue-headed quail dove, or blue-headed partridge-dove, is a bird in the pigeon and dove family Columbidae that is endemic to the island of Cuba.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

This species lives primarily on the forest floor where it forages for seeds, berries, and snails. Breeding occurs mainly between April and June, with nests made on or close to the ground.

In crisis

Today, it is very rare or virtually extinct in most of its range. As of 2012, the population size is estimated to be between 1,000 and 2,499 individuals and there are three populations with good numbers near the Zapata Swamp and in the Pinar del Río Province. Even so, the density of this species may be greater than previously estimated, and as such there may be more individuals than previously expected.

The population is suspected to have a slow or moderate declining trend. The major threats to the species continue to be hunting and habitat destruction.

Blue-headed Quail-Dove is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Blue-headed Quail-Dove, Wikidata item Q649940. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.