Japanese Wood Pigeon - Ecology

Ecology

It is a pigeon which is endemic to some islands of Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea. It is mainly an isolated island Wood Pigeon, a robust and confident forest bird with the same characteristics of other Columba genus pigeons adapted to habitat and vegetation of Islanders laurel forest or tropical or subtropical forest itself. Like some islanders races of Common Wood Pigeon and some species of Macaronesian or pacific islands Wood Pigeons has a low rate of reproduction.

Most of the Wood Pigeon's diet is vegetable, although food habits in Columba janthina are defined as omnivorous. It eats worms and small snails... but with strong trend to eat plants, leaves, flowers, drupes, berries, fruit, acorns, pine nuts and other conifer seeds, Kurogane mochi or (Ilex rotunda), mochi-no-ki (Ilex Integra), Sazanqua Camellia sasanqua, Tsubaki Camellia japonica, mulberry tree, ficus, Machilus thunbergii, Nandinia domestica... This bird eats seeds varied, buds and fruit it collects directly from the trees. Feeding on trees and do well in soil. It have a preference for trees near ponds and rivers.

A resident breeder in laurisilva forests, the Wood Pigeon lays one white egg in a flimsy twig nest. The nest is located in a tree cavity or in the rocks. Lays eggs one at a time in September. Spawning has only one egg. This species occurs most frequently lonely. Gliding and slowly soaring flight through repeated. Flight is quick and performed by regular beats. An occasional sharp flick of the wings is characteristic of pigeons in general.

This Wood Pigeon live in dense subtropical forests. It also live in beaches and islands in the evergreen broadleaf forest. It inhabits dense subtropical forest and warm temperate evergreen broadleaf forests, and is heavily dependent on mature forest, whose seeds were dispersed by this birds that eat the berries. It browses on leaves and buds, especially nitrogen rich foliage during breeding. The diet changes seasonally as the availability of fruit changes, and leaves can comprise the major part of the diet at certain times of the year, such as when there is little fruit around. It caught flowers and buds at the tips of the branches. One of their favourite leaves to eat is from prunus genus, young shoots from asteraceae, caryophyllaceae, and cruciferous, rounded and fleshy leaves of ilex. They play an important ecological role, as they are the only birds capable of eating the largest native fruits and drupes from some native trees. Its numbers fell sharply after human colonisation of the archipelagos, and it vanished altogether from some Islands. The major cause of its population decline was habitat loss from forest clearance, but hunting and nest predation by Introduced species and rats were also contributory factors. Protection of the laurel forests and a ban on hunting could enabled numbers to increase, although this species is still endangered.

Columba janthina is a type of Wood Pigeon that normally habitates on a Camellia japonica Linne but lives on a Machilus thunbergii forest in Korea. For that reason, the distribution of the Machilus thunbergii and the Japanese Wood pigeon are closely related and the preservation of Machilus thunbergii is directly connected with protection of Japanese Wood pigeon. Environment of Japanese Wood pigeon is in silver magnolia of seaside to eat fruits of a silver magnolia between the late July and the late August. The growing site of silver magnolia which is naturally growing in the coast of Sa-dong, Nam-myeon, Ulleungdo Island, is the representative place of the Japanese Wood Pigeon's migration. Therefore, this region is designated and is protected as a Natural Monument in order to protect Japanese Wood pigeon.