Pink-necked Green Pigeon Treron vernans
Singapore

The Pink-necked Green Pigeon Treron vernans is distributed within Southeast Asia - from Southern Myanmar, to the Malay peninsula and Singapore, to Sulawesi, the Philippines and Borneo.

The only commonly seen green pigeon in Singapore (it’s always worth checking flocks of Pink-necked for the locally scarce Thick-billed Green Pigeon Treron curvirostra though), the species probably used to be far more common in the past than it is now; bags of them where regularly shot during colonial times apparently. They are still hunted in other parts of Asia, usually shot as they gather in large flocks in the evening at communal roosts.

Besides hunting pressure they are probably also adversely affected by the disappearance of their food trees, but in Singapore they have adapted to non-forest habitats such as mangroves and cultivated land in rural as well as urban areas: they are very common around the island’s main golf course for example (at the Singapore Island Country Club), where they are often found feeding on the berries of the Straits Rhododendron Melastoma malabathricum and where most of the photographs below were taken.

Two Pink-necked Pigeons at dawn, Central Catchment Nature Reserve. April 2004

 

Two males (upper) and a female (lower),
Central Catchment Nature Reserve. October 2008

 

Male, Dec 2005

 

Male, Dec 2005

 

Male, Dec 2005

 

Male, April 2004

 

Female, April 2004

 

Female, April 2004

 

Female, April 2004

 

Female, April 2004

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores