The Sri Lanka green pigeon or Ceylon green pigeon (''Treron pompadora'') is a

pigeon 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 ...

in the genus ''

Treron ''Treron'' is a genus of bird in the pigeon family Columbidae. Its members are commonly called green pigeons. The genus is distributed across Asia and Africa. This genus contains 30 species, remarkable for their green coloration, hence the common ...

''. In

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, this bird and several other green pigeon are known as ''bata goya'' in the

Sinhala language Sinhala ( ; , ''siṁhala'', ), sometimes called Sinhalese (), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 milli ...

. It is found in the forests of

. Many authorities

split Split(s) or The Split may refer to: Places * Split, Croatia, the largest coastal city in Croatia * Split Island, Canada, an island in the Hudson Bay * Split Island, Falkland Islands * Split Island, Fiji, better known as Hạfliua Arts, enterta ...

the species from the

pompadour green pigeon The pompadour green pigeon (genus ''Treron'') is a pigeon species complex. It is widespread in forests of southern and southeast Asia. Many authorities have split the pompadour green pigeon into multiple species, which are listed below: Distribu ...

complex.

Taxonomy

The Sri Lanka green pigeon was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist

Johann Friedrich Gmelin , fields = , workplaces = University of GöttingenUniversity of Tübingen , alma_mater = University of Tübingen , doctoral_advisor = Philipp Friedrich GmelinFerdinand Christoph Oetinger , academic_advisors = , doctora ...

in his revised and expanded edition of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

's ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

''. He placed it with all the other doves and pigeons in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

Columba Columba or Colmcille; gd, Calum Cille; gv, Colum Keeilley; non, Kolban or at least partly reinterpreted as (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is toda ...

'' and 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 ...

''Columba pompadora''. Gmelin based his description on the "Pompadour pigeon" that had been described and illustrated in 1776 by the English naturalist Peter Brown. The Sri Lanka green pigeon is now placed with around 30 other green pigeons in the genus ''

'' that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist

Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot Louis Pierre Vieillot (10 May 1748, Yvetot – 24 August 1830, Sotteville-lès-Rouen) was a French ornithologist. Vieillot is the author of the first scientific descriptions and Linnaean names of a number of birds, including species he collecte ...

. The genus name is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''trērōn'' meaning "pigeon" or "dove". The specific epithet is from

Madame de Pompadour Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and rema ...

, a mistress of

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

of France. The species is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

: no

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

are recognised.

Behaviour

The Sri Lanka green pigeon usually occurs singly or in small groups. Its flight is fast and direct, with the regular beats and an occasional sharp flick of the wings that are characteristic of pigeons in general. It eats the seeds and

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

s of a wide variety of plants. It builds a stick nest in a tree and lays two white

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

References

*Collar, N.J. 2011. Species limits in some Philippine birds including the Greater Flameback Chrysocolaptes lucidus. Forktail number 27: 29–38. *Rasmussen, P.C., and J.C. Anderton. 2005. Birds of South Asia: the Ripley guide. Lynx Edicions and Smithsonian Institution. {{Taxonbar, from=Q489860

Sri Lanka green pigeon The Sri Lanka green pigeon or Ceylon green pigeon (''Treron pompadora'') is a pigeon in the genus '' Treron''. In Sri Lanka, this bird and several other green pigeon are known as ''bata goya'' in the Sinhala language. It is found in the forests ...

Endemic birds of Sri Lanka