THE



321



Hvicultural flfoagasme,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURA L SOCIETY.



New Series —VOL. IV. — NO. 11 .—All rights reserved SEPTEMBER, 1906 .



THE BURMESE COLLARED TURTLE-DOVE.


By T. H. Newman, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.


Before coming to the Collared Turtle-dove of Burma, it

will be necessary first of all to go a little into the history of the

Collared Turtle-dove of Asia. There is but one species, if we

exclude the little Ruddy Turtles of India and Burma, China,

etc., which are now generally placed in a separate group, owing

to the difference in colour of the sexes, I think there are other

good reasons as well for keeping them distinct, but I do not go

into that here.


This Turtle-dove ought to be of considerable interest to

Aviculturists, because it was for long considered to be the wild

ancestor of the familiar domestic Barbary Dove, with which how¬

ever, as I shall point out later, it has nothing whatever to do.


First of all by what name must this dove be known ? In

1894 Von Othmar Reiser, brought out his Avifauna of the

Balkans, in the preparation of which he evidently consulted a

little known work by Johan von Frivaldsky, entitled “ Balkanyi

Termeszettudomanyi Utazasrol, Budan, 1838,” in which a

description and plate of a Turtle-dove are given which can only

refer to this bird. The name there bestowed is Columba decaocta.

Mr. Othmar Reiser pointed this out to Mr. Dresser, who published

the facts in the “ Ibis,” for 1903, pp. 89, 90. Frivaldsky’s name

is the oldest one known, as Dinnseus’ name Columba risoria , 1766,

refers to the domestic bird. As Frivaldsky founded his name on

a bird from the Balkan regions, this must be the typical locality ;

but the bird found from the Balkans through Turkestan, as far

as Yarkand is a particularly large form of this Turtle-dove,

which received the name of Turtur stoliczkce , Hume, “Stray



