Victoria Crowned Pigeon

The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is the largest living pigeon on Earth, a turkey-sized bird of the lowland rainforests of northern New Guinea that can weigh roughly 2 to 2.5 kg. Nothing about it fits the mental image of a city pigeon. The whole bird is a deep powder blue-gray, set off by a rich maroon breast, staring crimson eyes, and, above all, an extraordinary upright crest of lacy, fan-shaped feathers, each plume tipped in white so the whole crown looks like a piece of Victorian lace. The species was in fact named for Queen Victoria, and it looks the part.

For all its finery, this is a quiet, ground-dwelling bird. Pairs and small parties stroll slowly across the shaded forest floor, picking through leaf litter for fallen figs and seeds, murmuring low booming notes to one another. When startled, a Victoria Crowned Pigeon does not flee far; it bursts up with loud wing claps to a low branch and sits watching, a habit that has made it tragically easy for hunters to approach. That tameness, plus demand for its meat, plumes, and the cage-bird trade, has pushed it into decline, and it is now listed as Near Threatened.

Both sexes look alike, with the same lacy white-tipped crest, maroon breast, and blazing red eyes; males average slightly larger but the difference is impossible to judge on a lone bird. During courtship the male bows deeply, almost touching the ground, fanning his tail and swinging his crest toward the female while booming rhythmically. Young birds are dull, browner versions of their parents, with a shorter, sparser crest and a duller eye, and they trail the adults for weeks after fledging.

Within its range almost nothing can be confused with a Victoria Crowned Pigeon except its two sister species, the Western and Southern Crowned Pigeons, which replace it in other parts of New Guinea. Look first at sheer size: this is a bird the bulk of a small turkey, walking on the forest floor. Then check the crest. Only the Victoria Crowned Pigeon shows lacy plumes with bold white tips; the other crowned pigeons have crests of plain, unmarked filaments. Add the maroon breast, the broad pale gray band across the folded wing, and the fierce red eye in a dark mask, and identification is straightforward.

The voice of the Victoria Crowned Pigeon is as outsized as the bird. The most familiar sound is a deep, muffled, resonant boom, often written as whoo-oomp or a slow boom... boom..., so low-pitched that it seems to come from the ground itself and can carry a long way through dense forest. Birders sometimes describe it as sounding like a distant drum or someone blowing across the top of a huge bottle. Displaying males repeat these booms in a steady rhythm while bowing.

At closer range the birds also give a deep hoota contact note between members of a pair or group, along with quieter clicking and grunting sounds. When a bird flushes, the loud clapping of its wings is itself a useful cue that a very large pigeon has just left the forest floor. In many areas the boom is the first, and sometimes only, sign that this shy giant is present.

The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is endemic to New Guinea, where it occupies the northern lowlands of the island from the Indonesian province of Papua east across northern Papua New Guinea. It also occurs on several offshore islands, including Yapen and Biak in Cendrawasih Bay. The other two crowned pigeons take over elsewhere: the Western Crowned Pigeon in the northwestern Bird's Head region, and the Southern Crowned Pigeon across the southern lowlands.

It is a bird of lowland rainforest, swamp forest, and sago swamps, typically below roughly 600 m elevation, and it favors flat, undisturbed forest with an open floor and abundant fruiting trees. It is entirely sedentary; there is no migration, and pairs or small groups appear to live year-round in the same tracts of forest. Because it depends on intact lowland forest, the very habitat most heavily logged and settled in New Guinea, populations near roads, villages, and logging camps are usually the first to disappear.

Victoria Crowned Pigeons are primarily fruit-eaters that do their shopping on the ground. Rather than plucking fruit from branches, they walk slowly beneath the canopy and glean fallen fruit from the leaf litter, with figs an especially important staple. They also take seeds, and they round out the diet with invertebrates such as insects, snails, and other small animals found while turning over litter. Small groups often gather beneath a productive fruiting tree and will return day after day while the fall lasts.

This ground-level fruit habit gives the species real ecological weight. Because it can swallow large fruits and pass or drop their seeds well away from the parent tree, the crowned pigeon acts as a seed disperser for big-seeded rainforest plants that smaller birds cannot handle. Losing these pigeons to hunting is thought to have quiet knock-on effects on how New Guinea's lowland forests regenerate.

Pairs are believed to be monogamous and to maintain long-term bonds. After the male's bowing and booming courtship, the pair builds a fairly bulky but loosely woven platform nest of sticks, stems, and palm and fern leaves, usually placed in a tree several meters above the ground, higher than you might expect for such a ground-loving bird. The female typically lays a single white egg per attempt.

Both parents share incubation, which lasts roughly four weeks, and both feed the chick, at first on crop milk, the rich secretion pigeons and doves produce in the crop, and later on regurgitated fruit. The youngster fledges after about a month but continues to be fed and escorted by its parents for a considerable time afterward. With only one egg per clutch, even though pairs can nest more than once a year, the reproductive rate is very low. That slow pace of breeding is a core reason the species recovers poorly from hunting pressure.

Seeing one is a matter of going where they are, either on a birding trip to lowland forest in northern New Guinea or at one of the many zoos that keep this species. In the wild, walk trails slowly and quietly, scan the forest floor ahead, and listen for the deep booming call at dawn; the boom carries much farther than the bird can be seen and is usually how encounters begin. Flushed birds typically fly up to a low branch and sit, giving good views if you freeze. Much more accessible are zoos and walk-through aviaries, where the species breeds readily and you can admire the lacy crest from a few feet away.

• Western Crowned Pigeon: A close relative from northwestern New Guinea with a crest of solid blue feathers lacking the white tips
• Southern Crowned Pigeon: Another giant crowned pigeon of southern New Guinea, similar in size but with a paler blue crest and different breast tone
• Pheasant Pigeon: A large ground pigeon of New Guinea forests, long-tailed and pheasant-like but much smaller and lacking a crest