The Golden Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus luteovirens), also known as the Lemon Dove or Yellow Dove, is a small, approximately 20 cm (8 in) long, short-tailed fruit-dove in the family Columbidae. The common name refers to the males' bright golden-yellow colour. The body feathers appear almost iridescent due to their elongated shape and hair-like texture. The head is slightly duller with a greenish tinge. The bill, orbital skin and legs are bluish-green and the iris is whitish. The underwings and tail coverts are yellow. The female is a dark green bird with bare parts resembling those of the male. The young resembles female.
The Golden Fruit Dove is distributed and endemic to forests of Viti Levu, Ovalau, Gau, Beqa and Waya group islands of Fiji. The diet consists mainly of various small fruits, berries and insects. The female usually lays a single white egg.
The Golden Fruit Dove is closely related to the Whistling Fruit Dove and Orange Fruit Dove. These species are allopatric, meaning they do not share the same habitat in any location.
A common species throughout its limited range, the Golden Fruit Dove is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
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“Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit;Mnot to be reckoned one character;Mnot to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south?”
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“I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)