The White Crowed Pigeon

By Laurencia Smith

The White Crowned Pigeon is year around resident in The Bahamas, that mainly eats fruits.The White Crown Pigeons mainly live coastal woodlands and mangroves when breeding, but also well inland into coppice and pine forests as they follow available food resources in the non-breeding areas.

 The White Crowned Pigeon, scientific name is the Patagioenas leucocephala. The adult White Crowned Pigeon is dark grey, with iridescent lines along sides of the neck white bars on the nape with a with a brilliant white forehead and crown to the head a white iris and a pale-tipped red bill.

The woman white crowned pigeon is are similar to the male but the crown of the females is a duller grey greyish-white color. The minors are a less dark shade of grey, lack the nape pattern and white iris, and show only a few pale feathers on the crown.

A common year-round resident in The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica and Antigua. Locally common on Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, San Andres and Providencia. The White Crowned Pigeon diet is mostly made up of fruits from the evergreen or semi deciduous hardwood forests from which it feeds such fruits like poisonwood, Pigeon Plum, Gum Elemi, and along with small figs and blolly fruits. Seldom will the white crowned pigeon would eat wasps and flies, small land snails, seeds and flowers.

In The Bahamas the White-crowned Pigeon is generally a colonial nester, building a nest of twigs in mangroves and dry scrub. The breeding season ranges from March to August and in The Bahamas, it is often as late as September.

The White-crowned pigeon forms a strong pair bond with its mate and lays two shiny white eggs. Both the males and the females take turns on the nest, the males incubate during the day and females at night. Incubation lasts for about 13 -14 days. The bird is very skittish, and is known to simply abandon its nest when it is encroached upon.The song is Mourning Dove-like woo pop wool calls White-crowned pigeon chicks have 2 small spines projecting from the base of the nasal cavity which are thought to aid in food transfer from the parents.