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.
Famous quotes containing the words golden, fruit and/or dove:
“Fair Hope! our earlier Heaven! by thee
Young Time is taster to Eternity.
The generous wine with age grows strong, not sour,
Nor need we kill thy fruit to smell thy flower.
Thy golden head never hangs down
Till in the lap of Loves full noon
It falls and dies: Oh no, it melts away
As doth the dawn into the day,
As lumps of sugar lose themselves, and twine
Their subtle essence with the soul of wine.”
—Abraham Cowley (16181667)
“But we still remember ... above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and crude,the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New English too, brought hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that theres a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry. ... poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.”
—Rita Dove (b. 1952)