Journal of Threatened
Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 November 2022 | 14(11): 22201–22202
ISSN 0974-7907
(Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8100.14.11.22201-22202
#8100 | Received 11
July 2022 | Final received 12 August 2022 | Finally accepted 21 September 2022
First sighting record of the
Orange-breasted Green-Pigeon Treron bicinctus (Aves: Columbiformes:
Columbidae) from Chittaranjan,
West Bengal, India
Shahbaz Ahmed Khan 1,
Nazneen Zehra 2 & Jamal
Ahmad Khan 3
1–3 Department of Wildlife Science,
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh 202002, India.
1 sakhan44@myamu.ac.in
(corresponding author), 2 nzehra@myamu.ac.in, 3 jamal.wl@amu.ac.in
Editor: H. Byju, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Date of publication: 26 November 2022 (online
& print)
Citation: Khan, S.A., N. Zehra & J.A.
Khan (2022). First
sighting record of the Orange-breasted Green-Pigeon Treron
bicinctus (Aves: Columbiformes:
Columbidae) from Chittaranjan,
West Bengal, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 14(11): 22201–22202. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8100.14.11.22201-22202
Copyright: © Khan et al. 2022. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: Department of Wildlife, Aligarh
Muslim University.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank C.L.W.
authorities for permitting me to conduct field surveys in Chittaranjan,
W.B. I would also like to acknowledge my supervisor Dr.
Nazneen Zehra, and Prof. Jamal Ahmad Khan, Dept. of
Wildlife Science, Aligarh Muslim University for their support and encouragement
in reporting the observation.
The Orange-breasted Green-Pigeon Treron bicinctus is
a non-migratory bird species from the family Columbidae.
This species favours evergreen and moist deciduous
forest types, and it is gregarious, arboreal, and frugivorous, like all other
green pigeons (Dave 2014) that forages silently and slowly on trees, usually in
pairs or small groups (Tanty et al. 2018).
According to Ali & Ripley (1981), it is a resident bird in India with
normal seasonal local movements. It is distributed in northern India from
eastern Uttarakhand to Assam valley, the lower part of southern Assam hills,
Himalayan foothills, and adjacent plains. In peninsular India, it ranges from
West Bengal, and Chota Nagpur, southward along the
Eastern Ghats, also inhabiting the Western Ghats and associated hill ranges
from Kerala northward through Karnataka to Goa. The bird has its global
distribution in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malay Peninsula, and South Vietnam.
Its conspecifics are also present in Sri Lanka, Java, and Hainan (Ali &
Ripley 1981). However, according to Grimmett et al.
(2016), the bird is a resident species of Himalaya, hills of India and Sri
Lanka and had a former range in Bangladesh.
First sighting record from Chittaranjan, West Bengal: In this paper, we report the
first sighting record of the Orange-breasted Green-pigeon in Chittaranjan (23.85849N & 86.92587E), West Bengal,
India, with photographic evidence (Image 1). The bird was sighted on 13 March
2021, at about 1610 h, near the NCC camp on River Road in Chittaranjan.
A flock of Orange-breasted Green-pigeons was perching and preening themselves
on the upper canopy of the Kassod Tree Senna siamea. The river road of Chittaranjan
is surrounded by dense vegetation on both sides. At first sight, the flock
appeared to be of the commonly found Yellow-footed Green Pigeons. With the help
of the photographs successfully captured, we noticed the presence of pale
blue-grey nape and yellowish-green crown, yellowish-green underparts and the
red feet. The male had an orange breast bordered above by a lilac band, and a
grey colour in the central feathers of the tail was
also observed in both sexes, which differentiated it from Yellow-footed Green
Pigeons. Based on the description in Grimmett et al.
(2016), the flock was recognised as Orange-breasted
Green Pigeons Treron bicinctus.
Records from other Indian
regions: Other Indian Records are from Buxa Tiger
Reserve, West Bengal (Allen et al. 1996), North Tripura (Choudhury 2010), West
Tripura (Bhattacharjee et al. 2013), Bhubaneswar, Odisha (Tanty
et al. 2018), Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand (Kaushik 2013), Lucknow, Uttar
Pradesh (George & Lawrence, 2015), Goa (Baidya
& Bhagat 2018), Sharavathy landscape, Karnataka (Barve & Warrier 2013), Gir National Park, Gujarat (Dave 2014), Shinoli
village, Maharashtra (Hiragond & Gavade 2012), Point Calimere and Sriharikota (David et al. 2015), and Kasaragod District,
Kerala (Rodrigues 2020).
For images - - click here for full PDF
References
Ali, S.,
& S. D. Ripley. (1981). Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan. Oxford University Press, New
Delhi.
Allen, D., J.
Anderton & K. Kazmierczak (1996). Report on an ornithological visit
to Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India, 17
February to 6 March 1992. Forktail 12: 47–64.
Baidya, P. & M. Bhagat (2018). A checklist of the birds of Goa,
India. Indian Birds 14(1): 1–31.
Barve, S. & R. Warrier
(2013). Bird
diversity of the Sharavathy landscape, Karnataka. Indian
Birds 8(3): 57–61.
Bhattacharjee,
P.P., R. Lodh, D. Laskar,
J. Majumder & B.K. Agarwala (2013). An ornithological survey in the
vicinity of Agartala city of Tripura state, north eastern India. Journal of
Research in Biology 3(3): 852–860.
Choudhury, A.
(2010). Recent
ornithological records from Tripura, north-eastern India, with an annotated
checklist. Indian Birds 6(3): 66–74.
David, J.P.,
R. Manakadan & T. Ganesh (2015). Frugivory and seed dispersal by
birds and mammals in the coastal tropical dry evergreen forests of Southern
India: A review. Tropical Ecology 56(1): 41–55.
Dave, R.
(2014). Sighting of
Orange-breasted Green Pigeon Treron bicinctus in Gir-Somnath
District: An addition to the avifauna of Gujarat. Flamingo Gujarat 18(2):
5–6.
George, N.
& A. Lawrence (2015). Snapshot sightings, Orange-breasted Green Pigeon from Lucknow, Uttar
Pradesh. Indian Birds 10(5): 140A.
Grimmett, R., C. Inskipp
& T. Inskipp (2016). Birds of the Indian Subcontinent:
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. Bloomsbury Publishing, 196 pp.
Hiragond, N.C. & S. Laxman’Gavade (2012). Range Extension of
Orange-Breasted Green-Pigeon Treron bicinctus (Jerdon 1840)-First
Record from Maharashtra, India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History
Society 109(3): 202–203.
Kaushik, M.
(2013). Range
extension for the Orange-breasted Green-pigeon Treron
bicinctus to western Uttarakhand, India. Indian
Birds 8(1): 17.
Rodrigues, M.
(2020). A Checklist
of the Birds of Kasaragod District, Kerala, India. Malabar Trogon 18(1):
40–56.
Tanty, K., S.R. Swain, R.S. Devi &
S. Kumar (2018). New foods in the diet of Orange-breasted Green-pigeon (Treron bicinctus Jerdon, 1840). I3 Biodiversity 1: 103.