IUCN Least Concern (LC)
Superb Fruit-Dove
Ptilinopus superbus
The Superb Fruit-Dove is small colourful pigeon with rainbow plumage and purple crown. Found amongst the rainforest tree canopy in Queensland and New South Wales
The Superb Fruit-Dove is a small colourful pigeon of the tree canopy. It is a compact bird, with short rounded wings and a short tail. The male has a purple crown, an orange hindneck, a blue-black breastband that separates a grey upper breast from white underparts. These are partly barred green, and the rest of the body is green. The green tail has grey tips. The female is green, with a grey breast and white underparts. There is a smallish purple patch on the crown. Young birds resemble females but lack the purple crown patch. The Superb Fruit-Dove’s call is a slow, steady series of ‘whoops’. This distinguishes the Superb Fruit-Dove from the Rose-Crowned fruit Dove.
The Superb Fruit-Dove’s call is a slow, steady series of ‘whoops’. This distinguishes the Superb Fruit-Dove from the Rose-Crowned fruit Dove. Bird call recorded by: Marc Anderson
The main song & call.
Credits to the owner/recorder.
The Superb Fruit-Dove is found in rainforests, rainforest margins, mangroves, wooded stream-margins, and even isolated figs, lilly pillies, black-berries and pittosporums.
Distribution map
When Superb Fruit-Doves feed, they often actively crawl over and through the foliage in the canopy of the rainforest in search of fruit, sometimes even feeding while hanging upside down. Although they are brightly coloured — a spectacular mixture of purple, burnt orange, green and blue-grey, sprinkled with black spots — they are often difficult to see while foraging in the crowns of trees and their presence is most often betrayed by the sound of fruit falling through the leaves and onto the forest floor below. They are among the most important seed dispersers in Australian tropical and sub-tropical forests. Superb Fruit-Doves often move at night, and many young birds fly into windows of buildings during their north-south movements. The Superb Fruit-Dove may also migrate to New Guinea in winter, but little is known of its movements, or the reasons for its sometimes southerly flights as far as Tasmania.
Superb Fruit-Doves are arboreal (living entirely in trees) and feed almost exclusively on fruit, mainly in large trees. They have a large gape, which allows them to swallow bulky items.
Superb Fruit-Doves build a flimsy platform nest of twigs in bushy trees from 5m-30m above the ground. Their breeding season is from September to January. The female lays one egg and incubates the eggs at night while the male incubates by day. Incubation is 14 days and the nestling period is 7 days.
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IUCN status reflects the conservation status of this species globally.
Habitat destruction
Climate change
