Victoria Crowned Pigeon by danob

Photography • Creatures • posted on Jan 31, 2010

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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.

Description

The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is the largest living pigeon apart from the extinct dodo! Which was also a member of the pigeon family, but was much larger, weighing around 14 kg. Like the crowned pigeon, the dodo fed on the forest floor, and with no predators on its island home of Mauritius and so not needing to fly, it evolved shorter wings and became flightless. Conservation wise they are endangered as they are hunted for food and sport and collected alive for illegal sale. Other than this the main culprit as usual is forestry and mining activities that threaten the forest they live in. They have largely disappeared from areas of human habitation but are thought to be fairly common in the wilder jungles of New Guinea. This captive bird nesting is part of the European conservation project and has been bred succesfully, however very little is known about the birds habits due to where it currently lives in Deep jungle, I am unsure about how it can be re-inroduced back into the wild.