Pigeons and Doves 101
In which we briefly consider pigeons and doves...
By Darren Naish on March 31, 20188
I’ve said many times at Tet Zoo that there are large groups of animals I’ve scarcely covered, or never even covered at all. Among these, perhaps, is Columbiformes, the pigeon clade… here are brief thoughts on the group as a whole, the text here combining material from my bird chapter in The Complete Dinosaur, Second Edition (Naish 2012) and unpublished stuff from The Vertebrate Fossil Record.
Feral pigeon photographed in Lisbon, Portugal. Feral pigeons are the descendants of domesticated Rock pigeons or Rock doves Columbia livia, a species native in its wild state to the coastal and mountainous regions of the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and the northern and western parts of Scotland and Ireland. This photo is interesting because the bird has its right foot turned inward so far that its hallux looks as if it’s on the outside edge of its foot. Credit: Darren Naish
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/pigeons-and-doves-101/
