Tooth-billed Pigeon



The Tooth-billed Pigeon is endemic to Samoa ,also known as Samoan Pigeon,This is the national bird of its home country,current IUCN Red List category is Endangered 

Tooth-billed Pigeon is a medium-sized, approximately 31 cm long, dark pigeon with reddish feet and red bare skin around eye. The underparts, head and neck are greyish with a slight blue-green iridescence, and the tail, wings-coverts and tertials are chestnut, while the remaining remiges are blackish. It has a large, curved, and hooked redish orange bill with tooth like projections on the lower mandible. Both sexes are similar, but the juvenile is duller with a browner head, with a black bill with only the base orange.The unique bill adaptation helps it feed on the desired fruits, by using the it to "hook out" the hard pea-sized seed & removing the viscous flesh with a sawing action of the lower mandible



It is threatened by deforestation for agriculture, and also the severe effects of cyclones,when canopy cover was reduced from 100% to 27%  and up to 95% of large trees may have been lost in some areas and more recently when cyclones passed close to the islands. Forest quality is further reduced by the subsequent invasion of highly aggressive non-native trees

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