(34) ALSOCOMUS PUNICEUS Tickell.
THE PURPLE WOOD-PIGEON. (Plate 18.)
Alsocomus puniccus Tickell, in Blyth's JA.S.B., XI p. 461 (1842) ; Blyth, Cat. B.M.A.S.B., p. 233 ; Layard, Ann. and Mag. N.H., XIV p. 58 ; Jerdon, B.I., III p. 469 ; Ball, Str. Feath., II p. 424 ; Blyth and Wald., B. Burma, p. 145 ; Godw.-Aus., J.A.S.B., XLIII pt. 2 p. 171 ; Armstrong, Str. Feath, IV p. 337 ; Hume and Dav., ib., VI p. 418; Ball, ib., VII p. 224 ; Hume, Str. Feath., VIII pp. 109, 157 ; id., Cat. no. 782 ; Oates, Str. Feath., VIII p. 167; Bingh., ib., p. 196; Legge, B. Cey., p. 696; Hume and Inglis, Str. Feath., IX p. 258 ; Oates, ib., X p. 235 ; id., B. Brit. Burma, II p. 289; Hume, Str. Feath., XI p. 296 ; Oates, in Hume's Nests and Eggs, 2nd ed., II p. 345 ; Blanf., Avi. Brit. I, IV p. 38; Stuart Baker, J.B.N.H.S., X p. 359; Inglis, ib., XI p. 474; Stuart Baker, ib., XIII p. 568; Hopwood, ib., XVIII p. 433; Harington, ib., XIX p. 365 ; id., B. Burma, p. 67. Columba pu?iicea Blyth, J.A.S.B., XIV pp. 867, 878; Salvadori, Cat. B.M., XXI p. 306; Sharpe, Hand-List, I p. 71.
Vernacular Names. Lali Pagooma, Assamese; Daohukuruma Koro- gophu, Cachari.
Description.—
Adult male. Whole upper part of head from fore-head to nape, together with a narrow line below the bare orbital skin, greyish- white ; sides of head and neck dull, rather pale chestnut-brown, greyish next the base of the lower mandible, and with the black bases of the neck-feathers often showing through on the upper-neck ; back and scapulars rich, deep chestnut, the feathers broadly edged with brilliant green and amethyst, the former predominating on the shoulders where their broad edges cover the whole of the visible plumage, and the amethyst covering the upper-back and interscapulars and showing as bars on the lower-back ; rump and upper tail-coverts deep slaty-grey, almost black, and margined with amethyst, except on the longest tail-coverts ; tail blackish-brown. Whole of the visible portion of the wing-coverts rich chestnut-brown, the lesser and median-coverts narrowly edged with metallic amethyst; edge of wing and greater priinary- coverts blackish-brown ; quills blackish-brown, the second primary narrowly edged with pale brown, this edging decreasing in extent until it disappears on the 5th or 6th primary. Innermost secondaries like the back. Breast, abdomen, flanks, axillaries and under wing-coverts a pale and rather vinous- chestnut, darker about the vent and tibial plumes; the breast is overlaid with a faint iridescent green sheen; under tail-coverts brownish-black, paler than the tail itself.
Colours of soft parts. Irides creamy-yellow, orange-yellow to orange- red, the eyelids bright, almost carnation-red and the orbital skin a duller purplish- pink. Bill greenish or bluish-horny from tip to nostril and the angle of the gonys, and thence to the fore-head and lores, including cere, a sanguineous- pink. Legs and feet purple-red, the soles paler and the claws horny-white.
" Iris bloodshot amber; bill vinous-purple at base, remainder greenish white; legs carnation, claws white" (Wardlaw Ramsay). " Claws pale yellow " (Jerdon).
Measurements.
Total length about 16 in. ( = 406 mm.); wing from 8.3 in. ( = 210.8 mm.) to 9.3 in. ( = 236.2 mm.) with an average of 8.8 in. ( = 224 mm.); bill at front .65 in. ( = 16.5 mm.) and from gape 1.1 in. ( = 27.9 mm.); tarsus rather under 1.0 in. ( = 25 mm.); tail 6 in. ( = 152.4 mm.) to 7 in. ( = 177.8 mm.).
Tenasserim birds do not appear to be any smaller than those from north-east India, one of them having a wing measuring 9.25 in. ( = 234.9 mm.), but in the Hume collection there is a rather large percentage of obviously young birds from this part of Burma, and it may be on this account that Blanford has recorded his opinion to the effect that birds from this district are smaller than from elsewhere.
Davison has only given the weight of one bird, and this as but 8 oz. On the other hand, the only two I have weighed were 14 and 14i oz. respectively, and 8 oz. seems very little for so big a bird so it may have been a mistake for 18 oz. Cripps records tho weight of sis males as varying between 12.75 and 18 oz.
Adult female. Similar to the male, but slightly smaller. The head is as pure a grey and the purple-chestnut as rich and glossy in the fully adult female as it is in the male, but from the large percentage of dull coloiued females in collections it may be that females take six months or a year longer than the males in obtaining their full splendour.
Measurements.
The female is decidedly smaller than the male, being about 14 in. ( = 355.6 mm.) in total length and with a wing-average of 8.44 in. ( = 214.3 mm.) and a range in extremes of 8.0 in. ( = 203.2 mm.) and 8.85 (= 224.8 mm.;; the measurements of the other parts are correspondingly slightly smaller. Two females weighed by Cripps were 13.60 and 14 oz. respectively.
Young in first year's phimage ( ? females in second year also) are generally much duller in coloration and with the under-parts from chin to vent a dull pale brown only suffused here and there with chestnut; the head is the same coloration as the neck, and the upper-parts are more brown.
Young in first plumage are still browner and duller and have the wing- coverts and interscapulars brown margined with rufous and submargined with darker.
Distribution.
In the heavily-forested parts of Eastern Bengal, Singhbhum, Manbhum, Purulia, Sunderbunds, Dacca and Mymensingh and thence throughout the districts of the Assam Valley into Burma. South and east of Assam it is found in Cachar, Sylhet, Tipperah and Chittagong, and through all the damper wooded parts of Burma, Cochin China, and Siam into the Malay Peninsula. There is a single specimen of this species in the Poole Museum, which was procured by Layard in Ceylon, and Legge himself thought he saw a flock of them near Borella in 1869. Since then no one has again met with this Pigeon, and it can only occur in that island as a very rare straggler. It has never been found in southern India.
Nidification.
There are only two notes recorded on the breeding of this Pigeon. Oates, the first to discover its nests and eggs, writing to Hume from Pegu recorded : " Kyeikpadein, 27th July.—Nest in fork of horizontal bamboo-bough, about 10 ft. from the ground, composed of a few twigs woven carelessly together. Male bird sitting. One egg quite fresh. Colour white, very glossy. Size 1.47 by 1.15 in. Probably only one egg laid."
The first eggs seen by myself were taken by my collectors on the 1st and 2nd of June, 1889, and were brought to me a few days later. The two nests from which they were taken were described as rough structures of sticks through which the eggs were visible from below, and in both cases they were said to have been placed in small saplings five or six feet from
the ground. These two eggs measured 1.65 by 1.28 in. and 1.63 by 1.25 in.
Since 1889 I have taken about a dozen nests of this Pigeon in North Cachar, Assam, and in the Khasia Hills. The nest is the usual Pigeon's nest of twigs and sticks, and measures about 8 or 9 in. in diameter by about 2 to 4 in. deep. The materials of which it is composed appear to have been picked up dead from the ground and not torn from the living tree; the depression is hardly visible and the twigs are put together in the roughest manner imaginable.
In most cases the nest is placed in a small tree or tall bush at no great height from the ground, generally between 5 and 10 ft., but occasionally it is placed higher up in a tall tree and still more seldom in a bamboo-clump. In the latter case, however, the bamboo-clump selected appears to be always one standing in mixed tree and bamboo forest, and not in jungle composed of bamboo only.
Normally the number of eggs laid is one only, but more than once I have taken two from the same nest, and the bird probably lays two eggs in about once in every five instances.
The eggs are of the ordinary Columba type, pure white, long ellipses in shape or long ovals, abnormal eggs tending towards pointed ovals. The texture is hard and close but not very fine, and, even when first laid, they are not highly glossed.
They vary extraordinarily in size, the largest egg in my collection being 1.65 by 1.28 in. ( = 41.8 by 32.5 mm.) and the smallest 1.40 by 1.10 in. ( = 35.5 by 28 mm.) ; the average of fifteen eggs is 1.48 by 1.15 in. ( = 37.6 by 29.2 mm.).
They seem to be late breeders, all my eggs having been taken in the last few days of May, in June, or in early July. Both birds take a share in the duties of incubation, and I have taken more males than females on the nest, but this is possibly due to the fact that, as is the case with many other Pigeons and Doves, the male bird seems to take up his duties during the daytime, whereas the female sits principally at night.
The tree, bush, or bamboo-clump selected as a site for their nest is one almost always within easy reach of water, often on the bank of some small forest-stream or pool and, equally invariably, it is one standing in fairly thick forest.
The Purple Wood-Pigeon is a bird more of the plains than mountains, but ascends the latter regularly to a height of some 2,000 ft., and is sometimes found up to about 4,000 ft. At whatever height it is found, it seems essential that there should be both ample evergreen or shady forest and a certain amount of cultivation. Over the greater part of its range it appears to be a decidedly rare bird. In the plains of Cachar and Sylhet it is commonly met with, and both Messrs. Vernon Woods and W. Cathcart, CLE., tell me that they have frequently shot this Pigeon in the rice-fields when out snipe-shooting at the end of the season after the rice has been cut. About the foot-hills of the Sylhet and Khasia Hills it is even more numerous, and Harington says that in the Myitkina district and round about Rangoon it is very fairly plentiful. Bingham also found them by no means rare in the Sinzaway Forest Reserve, in Tenasserim, but everywhere else, though widely distributed, it is only to be found in very small numbers.
I have never seen this Pigeon in flocks, nor have the numerous observers and collectors who have worked for me ever seen them except singly or in pairs, or perhaps a pair of old birds accompanied by their young one on its first leaving the nest. Colonel Tickell, however, the discoverer of the bird, found them in small parties of four or five along the banks of rivers shaded by large forest-trees in Singhbhum.
This fine Wood-Pigeon has hitherto been considered to be enthely frugivorous, but this is by no means the case, as it eats grain of almost any kind quite as freely as fruit. When the rice has been harvested and the fields have all dried up, this bird is a regular visitor to those fields which border or intersect the forest-lands, and may be met with in the very early mornings or late afternoons walking about in the stubble picking up the rice which has been left bchind. So also, the Sylhetees inform me, it frequents the fields of Indian corn and " Bajra," a species of millet, eating both these kinds of grain from the crop itself as it ripens or from the gleanings after the crop has been reaped.
I do not think it is ever found feeding veiy far from forest, but it will traverse considerable extents of open country in order to get from one feeding-place to another, and I have had several reports sent me of birds killed in wide open plains whilst thus crossing it from one forest to another. It is a strong, swift flier, very direct in its move- ments and proceeding with the typical, rather deliberate wing-beats of the Common Wood-Pigeon. On the ground it is a decidedly active bird, moving about well and freely with action similar to, but less clumsy than, that of our European bird.
I have never heard the call of this Pigeon, but Bingham describes it as " a soft mew, not unlike that of Carpophaga aenea, only not half so loud or booming."
The plumage of the Purple Wood-Pigeon is just as thick as that of the other species of the genus, whilst it seems to be also closer together and better attached to the skin, so that it offers an even greater resistance to shot than the others do, and it is consequently a very difficult bird to bring down at long range. On the other hand, when falling from a height it does not get so dreadfully knocked to pieces as do most Pigeons, and, consequently, good skins are more easily obtained, or rather, more frequently in proportion to the number of birds killed.
