The Yellowish Imperial Pigeon (Ducula subflavescens), also known as the Yellow-tinted Imperial Pigeon or Bismarck Imperial Pigeon (leading to easy confusion with D. melanochroa), is a relatively large species of bird in the Columbidae family. It is endemic to forest and woodland in the Bismarck Archipelago. It is threatened by habitat loss.
It is often considered a subspecies of the Torresian Imperial Pigeon (which in turn sometimes is considered a subspecies of the Pied Imperial Pigeon), but is increasingly treated as a separate species. It resembles the Torresian Imperial Pigeon, but has a distinctly yellow-tinged plumage and a bluish base to the bill.
Famous quotes containing the words imperial and/or pigeon:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)