Wood Pigeon

About the Wood Pigeon

The common wood pigeon (Columba palumbus), also known simply as the wood pigeon, is a large pigeon native to the western Palearctic. It belongs to the genus Columba, which includes closely related species such as the rock dove (Columba livia). It has a flexible diet, feeding mainly on plant material, including cereals, and is therefore considered an agricultural pest. Wood pigeons are extensively hunted over much of their range, but this does not appear to have a major impact on their population numbers.

The common wood pigeon was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba and coined the binomial name Columba palumbus. The specific epithet palumbus is an alternate form of the Latin palumbes for a wood pigeon.

Five subspecies are recognised, one of which is now extinct: C. p. palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 – Europe to western Siberia and Iraq; Northwest Africa † C. p. maderensis Tschusi, 1904 – Madeira (extinct) C. p. azorica Hartert, 1905 – the eastern and central Azores

C. p. iranica (Zarudny, 1910) – southwestern and northern Iran to southwestern... Wikipedia →