Silvery Pigeon

Appearance

The silvery pigeon is indistinguishable from the pied imperial pigeon at a distance, although this is not necessarily true vice versa. As the pied imperial pigeon can vary between a pale grey, pure white and even yellowish colouration, it is often possible to tell that a bird is not a C. Argentina. At close quarters, the silvery pigeon may be recognized by a few characteristics: The plumage is always a pale silvery grey, with black remiges and ends of the tail feathers. There may be a slight greenish sheen on the feathers of the backsides of the neck. The black part of the tail is equal in length in all feathers, whereas it forms a black triangle pointing headwards on the underside of the pied imperial pigeon's tail.

The birds are slightly smaller than the PIP, with a total length of around 36 cm, females being marginally larger and darker than males on average, and juvenile birds are apparently more sandy-coloured on the upperpart feather fringes and breast.

Range and habitat

This species was recorded during the late 19th and early 20th century from offshore islands of the Natuna Sea (west of Borneo) and west of Sumatra, Indonesia, and on the adjacent mainland. Verifiable records exist from Burong Island, Sarawak (1899), Saya in the Lingga Islands (same year), Simeulue (e.g. Locations recorded earlier included Bintan in the Riau Islands (June 1930) and Pulau Gurungan Besar in the Karimata islands (March 1931) and (unconfirmed, before 1937) from Pulau Jarak in the Straits of Malacca.

It was thought to be extinct but wild populations rediscovered in 2008 near Masokut Island of the Mentawai archipelago might represent this species, and photographs from Simeulue confirm its existence there.

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

Breeding

It also breeds in these birds' nesting colonies, probably over a period of several months from March/April on. Like most other pigeons, it builds a flimsy stick nest in trees and lays a single white egg, that has a chalky, not glossy shell (as opposed to that of the PIP).

In crisis

Silvery Pigeon is Critically 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 Silvery Pigeon, Wikidata item Q994440. 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.