The Sheldon Forest has recently been home to this lovely female Superb Fruit-Dove (pictures 1-8). It was discovered by Kurtis Lindsay on June 26th. It has been seen repeatedly by many visitors to the same area. It is residing in privet trees feeding on the berries. Wojciech and I found it today after the rain (Sunday 11 July 2004). This is our first Superb Fruit-Dove for New South Wales. Note the darker green/blue tail band on picture 6. This has been the subject of some discussion on Birding-Aus. However, PNG (Beehler 1986) and Solomons (Doughty 1999) bird guides clearly show a dark green dorsal tail with a lighter terminal band and lighter area grading into the rump almost exactly the same as here. Australians guides seem to have glossed over this feature, however. Also note the Brown Cuckoo-Dove (pictures 9-11) and White-Eye (picture 12) which were also feeding on the privet berries. All pictures are copyrighted to Kevin Vang / Wojciech Dabrowka.
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