THE BRONZE- WINGED DOVE 
The pied imperial pigeon (Malay name, rawa), or as 
It is much more often called, the nutmcg-pigeoiij is also met 
with ill Singapore. Throughout the whole of its range which 
exttinds from the Andaman and Kicobar Islands to Australia 
it is never found far from the coasts and in the Malay 
Peninsula is rigidly confined to the small islands near the coast 
and the mangrove. In Singapore it is sometimes to be found 
along the coast of the western half of the island, Vnit its 
occurrence in numbers depends on the fruiting of certain 
trees and it is rarely safe to count on seeing this beautiful bird 
in any one locality at a specified time, We have seen nutmeg- 
pigeons in small flocks on the tiny Pulau Meranibong off the 
W, coast of Singapore and also on the coast of l uas on the 
mainland of Singapore in the month of August. The birds 
were extremely shy. They were feeding on the fruit of very 
tall trees and look flight on the least alarm. We managed to 
get one or two by waiting at the foot of the tree from which 
they were originally disturbed until they returned to feed» 
This handsome pigeon is unique in appearance being 
entirely black and white. The head, body and wings are white 
and the wing-quills and the terminal half of the tail are black. 
A very rare pigeon know^u as ColHmbo argentina and which 
may popularly he called the silver-pigeon may possibly be 
recorded from Singapore in the future. It is extremely like 
the nutmeg'pigeon in appearance but has the white of that bird 
replaced by delicate grey. Any bags of nutmeg-pigeon 
obtained locally should be carefully examined in view of the 
possible occurrence of the much rarer species. Both these 
species are much larger than the punai and rival the 
domesticated pigeon in size. 
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