The grey-headed imperial pigeon (''Ducula radiata'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family

Columbidae Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are

subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Description TSMF is generally found in large, discont ...

s and

subtropical or tropical moist montane forest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...

Description

The grey-headed imperial pigeon is a moderate-sized imperial pigeon with a long tail and a total length of about . The head and underparts are grey and the hind neck is black, while the upper parts are metallic green, glossed on the mantle and scapulars with brownish-crimson. The tail is dark in colour with a narrow and inconspicuous band of pale grey near the base. The iris is orange, the beak is olive-green with a black tip or black all over, and the legs are purplish-red. The rather similar

white-bellied imperial pigeon The white-bellied imperial pigeon (''Ducula forsteni'') is a species of bird in the pigeon family Columbidae. First described by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1854, it is endemic to Indonesia, where it is found on Sulawes ...

(''Ducula forsteni'') is larger and more heavily built, and has a broader band of grey on the tail; this is more centrally located and conspicuous.

Distribution

The grey-headed imperial pigeon is

to the island of

in Indonesia. It is mostly a bird of montane forests, generally found at altitudes of between , but sometimes frequents the foothills at lower elevations. Its typical habitat is primary forests but it is also found in secondary growth forest and woodland edges.

Ecology

The grey-headed imperial pigeon is most often seen in pairs or alone, but outside the breeding season may form small flocks of up to twenty birds. It has a fast, direct flight and can sometimes be seen flying high above the forest canopy. Like other imperial pigeons, it feeds on fruit which it picks from the branches of trees, scrambling about acrobatically in the canopy; it swallows the fruits whole and thus serves a role in the distribution of their seeds. Nests have been found in December and March, so the breeding season may be long. A single egg is laid in a cliff-ledge nest, in a hole in a tree or in a sheltered niche.

Status

The grey-headed imperial pigeon is a somewhat uncommon bird but it has a widespread distribution and the population is thought to be stable, so the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed its conservation status as "

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1052791 Ducula Birds described in 1830 Endemic birds of Sulawesi Taxonomy articles created by Polbot