The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon (''Petrophassa rufipennis'') is a dark sooty brown

pigeon Columbidae is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with small heads, relatively short necks and slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. ...

with a distinctive bright chestnut patch on its

wing A wing is a type of fin that produces both Lift (force), lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform (aeronautics), planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-d ...

visible in

flight Flight or flying is the motion (physics), motion of an Physical object, object through an atmosphere, or through the vacuum of Outer space, space, without contacting any planetary surface. This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift ass ...

. It has distinctive pale lines across its face curving above and below its eye. A species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the family

Columbidae Columbidae is a bird Family (biology), family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the Order (biology), order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with small heads, relatively short necks and slender bills that in ...

, it is very similar in behaviour and habitat to the white-quilled rock pigeon but it is only found on rocky

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Due to the similarity, the term '' scarp'' may mistakenly be incorrectly used inte ...

s in western

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territorial capital, Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compa ...

in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon was observed by the German naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt near the head of the South Alligator River in the

of Australia, on 11 November 1845 while on a journey to

Port Essington Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remot ...

but no specimen was collected. The species was formally described and illustrated in 1898 by the Norwegian naturalist

Robert Collett Robert Collett (2 December 1842 – 27 January 1913) was a Norway, Norwegian zoologist. Collett was director and curator of the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, Zoological Museum at University of Oslo. Robert Collett was born at ...

based on a specimen that had been collected from the same locality by the explorer Knut Dahl. Collett coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

''Petrophassa rufipennis''. The common name rock-pigeon is a reference to the association of the genus to tropical sandstone escarpments. The genus name derives from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

words: ''petros'' meaning rock (its preferred habitat) and ''phassa'' a wild pigeon giving ''Petrophassa.'' The species name comes from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''rufus'' meaning red and ''penna'' meaning feather hence ''pennis'' meaning winged descriptive of the large chestnut red patch on its wing.

Description

The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon is a dark sooty brown pigeon with a distinctive bright chestnut patch on its wing visible in flight. This patch is often hidden in the folded wing. The pigeon has a

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the opposite wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingsp ...

of , a bill measuring and weighs between . It has black lores and pale spots on the head and neck, chin and throat is whitish. Fine grey lines extend around the eye "extending from above bill and turning over and behind eye; the other from base of bill passing below eye and beneath ear-coverts."

Behaviour and ecology

The pigeon is most often seen when flushed, in pairs or small groups, from a rocky ledge. They fly with loud clapping wing-beats often straight up from a gorge. This typical behaviour was observed by Leichardt in the first recorded observation of the species: The pigeon'
Northern Territory Conservation Status
is listed as Near Threatened (NT) while the ''

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...

'' identifies the pigeon's conservation status as Least Concern (LC). The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon shares a distinctive jizz and

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

type with the white-quilled rock pigeon, but are limited in extent to the sandstone country of

and Kakadu.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1258972 Petrophassa Endemic birds of the Northern Territory Birds described in 1898 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot