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African Olive Pigeon | Columba arquatrix
Olijfduif | Paloma Ojigualda
The African Olive Pigeon is the large dark pigeon of Afromontane forest, a fruit-eater that lives high in the canopy. Its bright yellow bill, yellow eye ring and yellow legs stand out sharply against the dark wine-red plumage.
Voice
A deep, hoarse, growling coo, krroo… krroo-krroo-krroo, that speeds up and fades away; unobtrusive and easily missed in the sounds of the forest. The wings clatter loudly on take-off.
Recording: Andrew Spencer — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 38–40 cm, heavy and dark. Crown and face are grey; neck, mantle and underparts dark wine red to purplish chestnut, with dense small white spots on breast, belly and wing coverts. The bill is bright yellow, the bare skin around the eye yellow and the legs yellow too. The tail is dark slate. The female is slightly duller and less spotted; juveniles are browner, with few spots and a duller bill. It flies fast and direct on powerful wingbeats, often above the canopy between forest patches.
Confusion species
Eastern Bronze-Naped Pigeon (Columba delegorguei) is smaller, lacks the white spotting and the yellow bill, and the male has a pale nape patch. Speckled Pigeon (Columba guinea) has large white triangles on a rufous wing and a red eye patch, and lives on cliffs and buildings. Red-Eyed Dove (Streptopelia semitorquata) is pinkish grey with a black collar and a dark bill. No other pigeon in the region is this dark with a yellow bill and yellow legs.
Habitat
Afromontane and mistbelt forest, forest edges and kloof forest, and increasingly exotic plantations, parks and gardens with fruiting trees. It eats almost exclusively fruit and berries, including those of wild olive, yellowwood and figs, and in parts of South Africa much of the invasive bugweed Solanum mauritianum. It wanders in search of ripening fruit and then sometimes turns up far from forest.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In South Africa from the Western Cape along the southern and eastern coast to KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Limpopo, also in Eswatini and locally in Lesotho. Further north it is tied to montane forest: the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe and adjacent Mozambique, the highlands of Malawi and north-eastern Zambia, and the western uplands of Angola. Beyond the region it occurs in the montane forests of East Africa north to Ethiopia, with isolated populations in Cameroon and on the Comoros.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the early morning, look for fruiting trees at the forest edge, where small groups sit quietly feeding in the crown. The Garden Route, the Drakensberg forest patches and Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands are good places to see it. In the suburbs of Johannesburg and Pretoria it visits gardens with fruit trees. All year, but locally very variable in numbers.
Conservation status
Not threatened. It has declined locally through clearance of indigenous forest and through hunting, but in South Africa it has benefited from exotic plantations and urban greenery and is spreading into towns. Isolated montane forest populations further north are more vulnerable to deforestation.
Scientific name
Columba arquatrix | Temminck, 1808
Temminck described the species in 1808 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Columba was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Columba is the Latin word for 'dove, pigeon'. arquatrix is Modern Latin for 'female jaundice sufferer', from arquatus, 'jaundiced' (the skin turning the yellow of the rainbow; arcus, 'rainbow'); the name goes back to Levaillant's 'Rameron'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Knysna, South Africa.