Columbidae
Crested Pigeon
Ocyphaps lophotes
The Whistling Crest
- Length
- 32 cm
- Wingspan
- 44 cm
- Family
- Columbidae
Identification
A grey-brown pigeon with a thin black spike of a crest, pink legs, and a wing finely barred in black with a bronze-green iridescent panel. The whistle is not a voice — it is the wing itself, a modified feather singing in flight.
Distinctive marks
- Thin erect black crest
- Grey-brown body
- Black-barred wing with bronze patch
- Pink legs
- Whistling wingbeat
Behaviour & ecology
Ground feeders of seed, often in small parties along roadsides and nature strips. When flushed they rise with that mechanical whistle and glide to a fence. They drink by suction, head down, unlike most birds.
Voice
A soft, mournful 'whoo' from cover. The famous sound is the wing-whistle.
On the Peninsula
Now thoroughly at home in Peninsula suburbs — a western bird that followed the cleared country south.
Season
Year-round.
Diet
Seeds, especially of grasses and weeds.
Conservation
Secure and still colonising.
Lore & resonance
They carry a thin dark thought on the crown and a song in the wing. You hear them leave before you have quite seen them go.
If you would attract them
A patch of seed-bearing grass and a dish of water at ground level, in the open. They prefer to see what is coming.
