Hello,

I thought I would post some pictures I took when I was in Mauritius of Pink pigeons. The second to last one is of a pigeon on her nest, can you spot her bright pink eye?

Here in Jersey

Here at Durrell we try and breed as many Pink pigeons as we can. Something I haven’t told you yet is that they can be somewhat clumsy parents. They tend to build nests with only a few twigs so when they lay their eggs (usually 2) they can sometimes fall through the bottom of the nest. To stop this, we give the pigeons a platform to build their nests on so that their eggs wont fall to the ground if they happen to make hopeless nests!



 







Last year we were able to breed 5 Pink pigeons which we were very proud of.

Something else the Pink pigeons aren't very good at is incubating their eggs. Once a bird lays an egg, in order for the egg to develop and hatch into a chick, the parent needs to sit on the egg, we call this 'incubation'. As the pigeons aren't very good at this either (they tend to kick the eggs out of the nest so they smash on the floor), we take their eggs once they are laid and place them underneath another kind of dove. Below you'll see a picture of one of our white doves that we use to raise our Pink pigeon squabs. (A squab is a baby pigeon). This works really well, and all our Pink pigeon squabs from last year were raised this way.

 

I'll be speaking to you later today so please feel free to ask me any questions about our Pink pigeons. I look forward to seeing you all.



What about Pink pigeons?

 

In my previous blog I was telling you that some species in Mauritius have gone extinct due to their forest disappearing or being hunted for food-like the Dodo and the Blue pigeon.

 

Thankfully, the Pink pigeon is still with us. But it could have been a very different story. In the 1970s there was as few as 20 Pink pigeons left in Mauritius. They were devastatingly close to becoming extinct. The reason they came so close to extinction was because lots of animals were brought to Mauritius, like macaques, mongoose, cats, rats-all these mammals eat the eggs of pigeons. Another problem was that a lot of the forest has disappeared, as I said earlier, so there weren't many trees left that the pigeons like to build nests in.  

 

What happened next was crucial for their survival. In the 1980s some birds were taken from the wild and kept in aviaries in Mauritius, not far from the National Park where they were found. It is sometimes easier to control things when birds are kept in captivity, like making sure they have somewhere nice to build a nest, have twigs to build nests with, and most importantly when they do lay eggs, it is easier to stop rats and cats eating the eggs as they are protected by an aviary.

 

This worked really well, and soon after there were enough birds to release back into the forest in Mauritius.

 

 

At the same time this was happening in Mauritius, some birds were sent to us here at Durrell so that we could start breeding them to make sure that if anything did ever happen to the wild population again, there were birds within zoos that could be returned to the wild. I didn't work at Durrell then, in fact I wasn't even born when the project started! But even now, more than 30 years later, Durrell are still helping Pink pigeons thrive in Mauritius.

 

Keep reading my blogs to find out how.

 

Until next time.....

 

 

Meet the dodo.....And me

Hi everyone,

My name is Catherine and I'm a bird keeper at Durrell Wildlife Park. It may only be April but the birds here have already started showing signs of breeding and some have even laid eggs. Some early starters even have chicks and have laid again ready to rear more young. One of the species of bird I work very closely with is the Pink pigeon. I'm sure you all know the bird in the picture isn't a Pink pigeon, but the dodo was a kind of pigeon, a flightless pigeon found only in Mauritius-the same place where Pink pigeons are found, and no where else in the wild.



It's very common to find species that are found only on one island of the world. If an animal is only found in one place, and that place suffers some sort of disaster-like the arrival of humans who kill and eat all the animals they find in order to survive, and then chop down all the forest so the animals have no home, then that species is in a lot of trouble and is in danger of becoming extinct-just like the dodo.

The Pink pigeon is thankfully, still with us.




What was potentially on its side in the early days when sailors found Mauritius and landed their, was that Pink pigeons apparently, taste dreadful! Unlike their cousins, the Blue pigeon. The tale goes that they tasted delicious and so were hunted to extinction.



There are so many fascinating animals that are no longer with us, that no person will ever see alive again. Woundn't it be terrible if there was something we could do today that could stop species going extinct and we didn't do it? How do we explain that to our children and their children after that?

Stay tuned for my next blog where I'll explain how my work at Durrell and out in Mauritius is helping stop the Pink pigeon going extinct.

Until next time.......

Pink Pigeon