Crested Pigeons being affected by sterility

I was hoping to see little babies of the Crested Pigeons this month but the female who was sitting on eggs has abandoned the nest altogether. Not only did she abandon the nest she wrecked the nest too. This occurred about 3-4 days ago. Either the male or the female is sterile because no chicks hatched whatsoever. I don't know which gender of Crested Pigeon is sterile.

It's strange but no Crested Pigeons have successfully hatched eggs in Tenterfield, as far as I can tell, for at least 5 or more years now. As soon as the adult population dies out naturally Crested Pigeons will become extinct in the area. This may be the first ever recorded species to actually go extinct. There is only one solution to this problem  to prevent this species from going extinct, and that is the introduction of fresh blood with younger and fertile birds.

For the last few days I have not seen or heard Crested Pigeons anywhere nor have I seen any fledglings. Did they leave the area? Where did they go? I have no idea!

Crested Pigeon nesting

Crested Pigeon approaching it's nest and keeping an
eye on me. Photo taken 24 August 2012.

The Crested Pigeon is one of my favourite birds because it is so colourful and such an easy going bird. I love the sound it makes but this species is not as common as the Australian King Parrot or even the Australian Wood Duck. Its numbers are very low in Tenterfield. All pigeon species are hunted extensively by birds of prey in Tenterfield, and their numbers have dwindled to almost zero over the years.

Where I live there is just one pair of Crested Pigeons and currently they are nesting. They started nesting about 2 weeks ago. I kept still and the pigeon came down from the roof top and landed in the bushes about 10 feet from where I was standing. I managed to get this photo of the bird before it went to it's nest. Once in it's nest it started cooing like crazy, so I video taped the sound it was making. Even though you cannot see the bird in the video I only really wanted to record the sound it was making and nothing else. I stopped the video recording short as the Crested Pigeon was cooing for about an hour before it flew out of the nest and went elsewhere.


My apologies for the terrible sound quality on this video. The wind was blowing strongly yesterday and I was in the middle of doing something when this video was taken.

Crested Pigeon Ocyphaps lophotes

It was almost sunset and this Crested Pigeon was in the shade at my neighbour Carol's place yesterday.

There are not many Crested pigeons here in Tenterfield's south-west. There may be 4-6 individual birds at most. They do not breed rapidly and in fact I don't know much about these pigeons. I do know they nest in a thick dense bush about 4-10 feet from the ground. I know this because my neighbour Carol told me she found a Crested Pigeon sitting (on eggs) in a nest in her native rose bush/climber. Other years the Crested Pigeons have made a nest higher up in dense cover in Carol's garden.

I was about 6 feet from this pigeon when I took a very quick photo of it as I was walking passed it. I do know this particular bird has a mate but I have only seen a baby Crested Pigeon a few years back. There were probably about 10 Crested Pigeons in the immediate area about 6 years ago but most of them were probably eaten by birds of prey.

Several years back I always had problems with one of these birds flying head first into my front windows and sometimes the front wall. They would get startled, panic, and fly off without looking where they were going. Fortunately none have been knocked unconscious in the process. As a result, and because other birds have done the exact same thing, I stopped regularly cleaning the windows of my Flat. This has actually prevented the birds from flying into the windows.

I'm hoping to get a better picture of the pair of Crested Pigeons soon as they have such pretty coloured feathers.