Critically Endangered
Tooth-billed Pigeon
Didunculus strigirostris
The tooth-billed pigeon, also known as the manumea, is a large pigeon found only in Samoa.
Appearance
The underparts, head and neck are greyish with a slight blue-green iridescence, and the tail, wings-coverts and tertials are rufous chestnut, while the remaining remiges are blackish. It has a large, curved, and hooked bright red bill, with tooth-like projections on the lower mandible that let them act as seed dispensers. The sexes are similar in appearance, but the juvenile is duller, with a browner head, and a black bill with pale orange at the base.
Range and habitat
The tooth-billed pigeon is confined to undisturbed forests of Samoa in the Pacific. Natural habitats for the tooth-billed pigeon in Samoa include the Central Savai'i Rainforest, Tafua Preserve, Fagaloa Bay – Uafato Tiavea Conservation Zone on Upolu Island, and Nu'ulua island. Manuscripts from the 1800s suggest chicks are confined to the forest floor.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Extinction warning: racing to save the little dodo from its cousin's fate Tooth Billed Pigeon: Breed Guide - Pigeonpedia.com The tooth-billed pigeon, also known as the manumea, is a large pigeon found only in Samoa.
In crisis
A related extinct species, the Tongan tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus placopedetes), is only known from subfossil remains in several archeological sites in Tonga. Native only to Samoa's primary rainforest, it is considered to be endangered, with only a few hundred individuals thought to remain in existence.
Tooth-billed 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 Tooth-billed pigeon, Wikidata item Q144053. 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.
