Ducks are OUT
March 11, 2021 2:03 PM   Subscribe

One of the main characters on Twitter today is the pink-necked green-pigeon (Treron vernans), a photo of which went viral overnight. Yes, it’s real. Yes, it’s stunning.
Steph Harmon in The Guardian: “What is this ‘hot pigeon’? Is it even real?”
posted by Going To Maine (45 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
IMO the Nicobar pigeon is prettier, but the Internet wants what it wants.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:06 PM on March 11, 2021 [11 favorites]


Victoria crowned pigeon, baby. It's the drag queen of pigeons.
posted by dlugoczaj at 2:11 PM on March 11, 2021 [8 favorites]


According to ebird.com, which I can only assume is an authority on the subject as I have opened no other tabs

[chef's kiss]
posted by fedward at 2:14 PM on March 11, 2021 [25 favorites]


another excellent picture of this fine bird
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:29 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]


that pigeon didn't have to go that hard
posted by Kitteh at 2:54 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]


Oh my that Nicobar is stunning, Going To Maine.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:06 PM on March 11, 2021


DC birders were all aflutter recently about sightings of a painted bunting, if you can't get enough colorful birds.
posted by fedward at 3:21 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]


I have found my fashion inspirations, I'm going full pigeon.
posted by winesong at 3:25 PM on March 11, 2021 [7 favorites]


I believe the correct term is hornithology.
posted by mhoye at 3:30 PM on March 11, 2021 [8 favorites]


tee hee
posted by Going To Maine at 3:31 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that's a father bird protecting his babies, despite what the url says, string of numbers. The females are green, still pretty but not rainbows.
posted by tavella at 3:34 PM on March 11, 2021


Going To Maine, don't miss out on the Masked Booby, the Red-breasted Nuthatch, or the Bushtit.
posted by fedward at 3:38 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


Nice and all, but no rainbow lorikeet, common to many parts of Australia including directly over where I park my car.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:39 PM on March 11, 2021 [14 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that's a father bird protecting his babies

yea, the caption is wrong, I didn't write it! Silly people putting their gender assumptions all over innocent fluffy birds! dad birds can be protective too!

This is a good thread because birds.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:44 PM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]


The Masked Booby

I will take any excuse to link to zefrank’s “Mating Dance of the Puffin” and “Mating Dance of the Ostrich”
posted by Going To Maine at 3:46 PM on March 11, 2021 [5 favorites]


DC birders were all aflutter recently

Love the oh-so-DC detail in the story that one of the first folks to see the bunting was the Swiss ambassador, and he gets the photo credit.
A rare painted bunting photographed Sunday by Jacques Pitteloud, Switzerland's ambassador to the United States, at the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park in Maryland. (Jacques Pitteloud)
posted by Going To Maine at 3:49 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


Okay, so I clicked on the link and found out that doves and pigeons are actually the same - mind blown! This has me suddenly questioning all sorts of things - I mean next thing someone is going to tell me that Koalas are not actually bears.
posted by piyushnz at 3:53 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]


PRETTY RAINBOW BIRDIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:54 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


Also, since I just went down a minor internet rabbit hole -- I've seen the picture of the Treron vernans sheltering his chicks a zillion times but never with credit, and it turned out to be a bit hard to find. The earliest reference I could find was in an old Livejournal account, which seemed oddly diffident about giving credit, just mentioning the last name in the last comment. But I couldn't find anything about "Rit Seek", even when combining it with search terms to try to avoid the flood of RIT hits. But a little more fiddling, and I found a version with the name on it, and it's Ric Seet, who is definitely not thrilled about not being credited.
posted by tavella at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]


Pretty birbs
posted by Windopaene at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


What is this ‘hot pigeon’? Is it even real?

What a preposterous question. It’s a bird, of course it’s not real.
posted by dephlogisticated at 3:58 PM on March 11, 2021 [11 favorites]


Let us not forget the funky American Woodcock.
posted by fedward at 3:59 PM on March 11, 2021 [9 favorites]


I am a watcher of many, many bird videos, fedward, and that is a supremely excellent bird video.
posted by jamjam at 4:06 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


That Woodcock has some sweet moves...
posted by Windopaene at 4:10 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


Malaysian and SEAsian twitter have been enjoying the attention, and iirc it's been described as a fairly common bird. I've seen it in more wooded areas.
posted by cendawanita at 4:51 PM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]


In Malay/Indonesian, it's known as punai gading (which can be roughly translated as tusk dove/pigeon). Not sure if vernacular indonesian carries the same meaning but 'punai' is also slang for male genitalia. 'kuku bird' in Singlish/Manglish (you might have recalled the ref in crazy rich asians) has the same logic. Soooo there's that too.
posted by cendawanita at 5:01 PM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


MetaFilter: not a curry situation.
posted by doctornemo at 5:05 PM on March 11, 2021


Ducks would like to have a word. So there.
posted by DarthDuckie at 5:13 PM on March 11, 2021


At least Ducks are not Geese.

Geese are assholes
posted by Windopaene at 5:20 PM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


Rainbow Pigeon is the new Unicorn, except real.
posted by brookeb at 5:23 PM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


There's a bunch of them that like the tree outside my window. The females are harder to spot but they are all very pretty birds. There are at least a couple of other dove variations in that tree, and it's neat to see that they're all cousins by the way they move. There's a thing about pigeons, that they can swallow water with their heads down and the way they bob their heads is a little different to most birds.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:27 PM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]






Ah yes, the pink-necked green pigeon.
Just one of the many species originally documented by the Overly-literal Speciesnamer.
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:24 PM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


I'm so very glad to see beautiful birds. My mother has been into birding since before I was born, and only in the last year or two have I really joined her in this. I should have done it much sooner. She's literally traveling to Costa Rica right now (dangerous, ridiculous, yes I know).

Near my home there are a few purple martin sanctuaries, and they're nesting in the next two months. These photos are good, they Almost capture how bright purple the male shines in sunlight. North of Mexico they primarily nest in human-supplied gourd-shaped birdhouses?? Because the history of human housing of purple martins is ancient and indigenous, using gourds?? I find this very exciting.

I am just, a huge fan of iridescence. Shout out to Anna's and rufous hummingbirds. I was once standing between an Anna's hummingbird and the low sun an hour before setting, and it looked directly down to me from a short tree, they like to perch at the top of trees. Its whole head and face made a reflective neon-raspberry triangle. I was humbled.
posted by panhopticon at 8:52 PM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]


This thread makes me want to watch The Big Year again; a terrific film about bird watching.
posted by Beholder at 9:29 PM on March 11, 2021


The crazy thing to remember, is that dinosaurs evolved into birds...

What?
posted by Windopaene at 9:54 PM on March 11, 2021


https://ebird.org/species/brant/ - they're good birds,
posted by mmc at 10:03 PM on March 11, 2021 [5 favorites]


I feel like this entire thread is one big spoiler for a bunch of jokes in the next episode or two of Last Week Tonight.
posted by krisjohn at 11:06 PM on March 11, 2021


The great horned owl pair that produced an ornery offspring down the road from my parents last year —inspiring an AskMe— have been seen nesting right next to their house in recent weeks. So if nature takes its course they'll have this delightful sound outside their bedroom window lulling them to sleep every night later this summer.
posted by theory at 11:18 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]


I read that as your siblings are a pair of horned owls.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:48 PM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


The doctor told my parents that it was a sure-fire method to keep rabbits out of their garden. They were desperate for a solution.
posted by theory at 12:49 AM on March 12, 2021 [2 favorites]


I'll forever be a long-tailed tit man. Once you have seen a flock of these ridiculously round flying ping pong balls there is no accepting lesser birds at the peak cute bird rank.
posted by srboisvert at 3:08 AM on March 12, 2021 [1 favorite]


I clicked on the link and found out that doves and pigeons are actually the same - mind blown!

Can't wait to see how you react to finding out that it's not just doves.
posted by flabdablet at 3:30 AM on March 12, 2021 [2 favorites]


They're all good birbs, Bront.

Except those flying city rats. They're full of crap and share it freely.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:10 AM on March 12, 2021 [1 favorite]


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