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Short-billed Pigeon | Patagioenas nigrirostris
Kortsnavelduif | Paloma piquicorta
The Short-billed Pigeon is a medium-sized brown arboreal pigeon of humid lowland forest, from south-eastern Mexico to north-western Colombia. It lives in the canopy and is usually detected by its clear four-note song, which is frequently heard in rainforest in the guide area.
Voice
A clear, rhythmic four-note song, hoo, koo-koo-KOO, with a separate introductory note and the stress on the last note, often repeated at length from the canopy. Also a low, growling grrr.
Recording: William Adsett — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
26–29 cm. A fairly small, stocky arboreal pigeon with a short black bill. The head, neck and underparts are grey-brown with a wine-red to purplish wash; the upperparts, wings and tail are dark olive-brown. The underwing is grey-brown. The eye is red and the legs are red. The sexes are alike; young birds are duller and browner.
Confusion species
Ruddy Pigeon Patagioenas subvinacea, in Costa Rica and Panama, is warmer reddish-brown with a cinnamon underwing, and usually lives higher in the mountains; the song is the most reliable difference. Pale-vented Pigeon Patagioenas cayennensis is larger, with a pale lower belly, and lives in open country and along rivers. Red-billed Pigeon Patagioenas flavirostris is larger, with a red bill base and blue-grey wings, and lives in drier, more open country. Scaled Pigeon Patagioenas speciosa has a scaled neck and breast.
Habitat
The canopy and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, also tall second growth, gallery forest and trees in open country next to forest; from sea level to about 1500 m. Lives alone or in pairs and feeds on fruit, berries and seeds in the treetops; seldom comes to the ground.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
The lowlands of south-eastern Mexico, from southern Veracruz and northern Oaxaca through Tabasco and Chiapas to the southern Yucatán Peninsula, and on through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, mainly on the Caribbean side, to Costa Rica and Panama, where it occurs on both slopes. Absent from El Salvador. Outside the guide area in north-western Colombia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Heard almost everywhere in larger lowland forest tracts, for example at Tikal in Guatemala, at La Selva and Carara in Costa Rica and along Pipeline Road in Panama. A singing bird often sits high on a branch at the forest edge and can then be found with binoculars.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. Fairly common to common in suitable forest. Disappears where lowland forest is cleared, but persists in second growth and in landscapes with many forest remnants.
Scientific name
Patagioenas nigrirostris | (Sclater, 1860)
Sclater described the species in 1860 as Columba nigrirostris; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Patagioenas was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. Patagioenas is Greek, from patageō 'to clatter' and oinas 'pigeon', after the clattering wings on take-off. nigrirostris is Latin, from niger 'black' and rostrum 'bill', after the black bill. The specimen the first description was based on came from Oaxaca, Mexico.