The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon (''Petrophassa rufipennis'') is a dark sooty brown pigeon with a distinctive bright chestnut patch on its

wing A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is expres ...

visible in flight. It has distinctive pale lines across its face curving above and below its eye. 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 very similar in behaviour and habitat to the

white-quilled rock pigeon The white-quilled rock pigeon (''Petrophassa albipennis'') is a dark brown rock pigeon with a white patch on its wing. It has distinctive pale lines across its face curving above and below its eye. It is a species of bird in the family Columbidae ...

but it is only found on rocky

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''escar ...

s in western

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon was observed by the German naturalist

Ludwig Leichhardt Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, (23 October 1813 – c. 1848) was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's dis ...

near the head of the

South Alligator River Alligator Rivers is the name of an area in an Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia, containing three rivers, the East, West, and South Alligator Rivers. It is regarded as one of the richest biological regions in Australia ...

in the

of Australia, on 11 November 1845 while on a journey to

Port Essington Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remote ...

but no specimen was collected. The species was formally described and illustrated in 1898 by the Norwegian naturalist Robert Collett based on a specimen that had been collected from the same locality by the explorer

Knut Dahl Knut Dahl Knut Dahl (28 October 1871 – 11 June 1951) was a Norwegian zoologist and explorer who made important bird collections in northern Australia. Early years Dahl grew up at Hakadal in Akershus, Norway, where his father was an estate manag ...

. Collett coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Petrophassa rufipennis''. The common name rock-pigeon is a reference to the association of the genus to tropical sandstone escarpments. The genus name derives from Greek words: ''petros'' meaning rock (its preferred habitat) and ''phassa'' a wild pigeon giving ''Petrophassa.'' The species name comes from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''rufus'' meaning red and ''penna'' meaning feather hence ''pennis'' meaning winged descriptive of the large chestnut red patch on its wing.

Description

The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon is a dark sooty brown pigeon with a distinctive bright chestnut patch on its wing visible in flight. This patch is often hidden in the folded wing. The pigeon has a

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

of , a

bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Plac ...

measuring and weighs between . It has black lores and pale spots on the head and neck, chin and throat is whitish. Fine grey lines extend around the eye "extending from above bill and turning over and behind eye; the other from base of bill passing below eye and beneath ear-coverts."

Behaviour and ecology

The pigeon is most often seen when flushed, in pairs or small groups, from a rocky ledge. They fly with loud clapping wing-beats often straight up from a gorge. This typical behaviour was observed by Leichardt in the first recorded observation of the species: The pigeon'
Northern Territory Conservation Status
is listed as Near Threatened (NT) while the ''

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

'' identifies the pigeon's conservation status as Least Concern (LC). The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon shares a distinctive jizz and

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 ...

type with the

, but are limited in extent to the sandstone country of

and Kakadu.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1258972 Petrophassa Birds of the Northern Territory Birds described in 1898 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot