Remarks on the Pigeon, Otidiphaps nobilis Gould

TI•E members of the family Columbidae have, in general, a normal, U-shaped furcula.Years ago Milne-Edwards (1869-1871) noticed a partial reduction of the clavicles in certain fruit pigeons and wrote "quelque fois m•me ses deux branches [of the furcula of pigeons] ne se soudent pas ensemble, et sont trop courtes pour se recontrer sur la ligne mddiane, de fagon qu'elles sont rddnites • I'dtat de stylets.Cette anomalie existe chez les Trdrons, les Carpophages, les Phaenorhines, et les Serrdsies."In the accompanying Atlas he figured this condition in Ducula (Phaenorhina) goliath from New Caledonia.This drawing was reproduced in Stresemann (1927-1934).This modification of the clavicles does not seem so widespread as Milne-Edwards implied in the sentence quoted.We found a normal furcula in the following species: Ducula luctuosa, D. bicolor, D. aenea, D. pacifica, D. concinna, Sphenurus sphenurus, Treron pompadora, T. bicincta, T. calva, T. olax, and in two or three species of Leucotreron but were unable to examine a specimen of Ducula (Serrisius) galeata of Nukuhiva Island in the Marquesas.Like Ducula goliath, it is a large, insular species possibly of somewhat weaker flight than the majority of the members of the genus and so may very well, as Milne-Edwards stated, have reduced clavicles.A much greater reduction of the furcula than in Ducula goliath was discovered by the senior author while dissecting two specimens of the remarkable New Guinea pigeon Otidiphaps nobills in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History.Dissection