White-bellied Green Pigeon Treron sieboldii 紅翅綠鳩
Category I. Rare winter visitor and passage migrant to wooded areas.
IDENTIFICATION
Jan. 2007, Martin Hale.
33 cm. Similar to Wedge-tailed Green Pigeon in plumage and in having a grey bill with bluish base and a narrow blue eye-ring but lacks chestnut on the upperparts and has a much whiter belly and ground colour to the undertail coverts.
VOCALISATIONS
Not recorded vocalising in HK.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Recorded in the central and northwest New Territories and on Po Toi and Tung Ping Chau islands, mainly in forest, shrubland and fung shui woodland.
OCCURRENCE
Records date back to 1983 and fall in the periods 23 October to 14 November and 25 December to 3 February, apart from one on 23 April.
1983: a male at Shek Kong Catchwater on 25 January (Chalmers and Viney 1985).
1992: a female at Tai Po Kau on 3 February.
1994: a female at Tung Ping Chau on 23 April.
2007: a female at Airfield Road, Shek Kong from 30 December 2006 to 7 January.
2011: one, probably a female, in flight over Mai Po on 14 November.
2013: one in Shing Mun CP on 23 October.
2014: a female on Po Toi during 25-26 December.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Individuals perch for long periods in the mid to upper canopy of trees, including fruiting Bridelia tomentosa and Melia azedarach.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Distributed in northern Thailand, northern Indochina, parts of central and eastern China, Taiwan and Japan (Baptista et al. 1997). The distribution of subspecies in continental China is imperfectly known. T. s. murielae has been recorded in Guizhou and Guangxi and is also resident on Hainan, T. s. fopingensis occurs in east Sichuan and southern Shaanxi and may also account for recent records from northwest Hunan, west Hubei and western Inner Mongolia, and T. s. sieboldii has been recorded from Fujian east to Jiangsu and also in Liaoning. In addition, T. s. sororius is resident in the mountains of Taiwan (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend decreasing.
Baptista, L.F., Trail, P.W. and Horblit, H.M. (1997). Family Columbidae (Pigeons and Doves). Pp. 60-243 in: del Hoyo, J., Elliot, A. and J. Sargatal. Handbook of the Birds of the World, vol. 4: Sandgrouse to Cuckoos. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain.
Chalmers, M. L. and C. A Viney. (1985). Systematic List. Hong Kong Bird Report 1983: 6-36.
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
