Nature & living things

One stuffed bird in Liverpool turned out to be the dodo's cousin

The spotted green pigeon is a bird known today from a single stuffed specimen in a Liverpool museum, and it's almost certainly extinct. It was first described in 1783 by the naturalist John Latham, who had seen two specimens of mysterious origin plus a drawing, but nobody could agree for over two centuries what it actually was. Some thought it a distinct species, others a deformed or juvenile Nicobar pigeon, and one influential collector dismissed it as a freak, which may be why it was largely ignored through the twentieth century. It only gained official recognition as a genuine extinct species on the IUCN Red List in 2008, after a writer championed its case and gave it the alternative name Liverpool pigeon. Its true origin is still unresolved, though a long-standing theory links it to a bird called titi in Tahitian oral tradition.

A genetic study in 2014, using DNA extracted from the specimen's feathers, finally settled the question of its identity, showing it was a true species closely related to the Nicobar pigeon and, more surprisingly, that both were the nearest living relatives of the extinct dodo and Rodrigues solitaire. This placed the bird in a group mixing tree-dwelling and ground-dwelling relatives, which helps explain why earlier naturalists kept proposing different, often incompatible classifications for it. Physically, the specimen is a dark, glossy greenish-brown bird with pale spotted feather tips, a black-and-yellow bill, and a banded tail, and later re-examination revealed its wings had been altered during preparation and were actually longer than once assumed, while a supposed bill-knob turned out to be an artist's invention. These longer wings, slender bill, and tree-adapted feet suggest it was an arboreal fruit-eater living in forest canopy, unlike its more ground-dwelling relative the Nicobar pigeon.

Much of what is known rests on careful detective work around a single damaged skin, since no bones, eggs, or field observations exist, and even basics like its weight or exact homeland remain unknown. Researchers have debated whether its plumage represents an immature or adult bird, drawing comparisons to imperial pigeons whose juveniles look markedly different from grown adults. Its likely home somewhere in the South Pacific or Indian Ocean would fit either a Polynesian legend about a sacred mountain-dwelling bird or a broader pattern of island-hopping ancestors related to the dodo's lineage. Most researchers now think it was a sedentary bird confined to a small, remote island, which would explain why it vanished quietly, probably in the 1820s, through hunting and introduced predators, before anyone could properly document it alive.

The bird was described in 1783 from two specimens of entirely unknown origin and a drawing. Only one of those specimens still exists, and its home island has never been identified.

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