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The rock dove, rock pigeon, or common pigeon (/ ˈ p ɪ dʒ. ə n / also / ˈ p ɪ dʒ. ɪ n /; Columba livia) is a member of the bird family Columbidae (doves and pigeons). [3]: 624 In common usage, it is often simply referred to as the "pigeon", although this is the wild form of the bird; the pigeons most familiar to people are the domesticated form of the wild rock dove.
Pigeon is a French word that derives from the Latin pīpiō, for a ' peeping ' chick, [6] while dove is an ultimately Germanic word, possibly referring to the bird's diving flight. [7] The English dialectal word culver appears to derive from Latin columba. [6] A group of doves has sometimes been called a "dule", taken from the French word deuil ...
African olive pigeon (C. arquatrix) Nilgiri wood pigeon (C. elphinstonii) The extinct Lord Howe pigeon (C. vitiensis godmanae) is known only from some travellers' reports There are 35 species recognised in the genus, of which two are extinct: [ 14 ]
The bird is also known as the American mourning dove, the rain dove, the chueybird, colloquially as the turtle dove, and it was once known as the Carolina pigeon and Carolina turtledove. [2] It is one of the most abundant and widespread North American birds and a popular gamebird, with more than 20 million birds (up to 70 million in some years ...
The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) recognizes 352 species in family Columbidae, the pigeons and doves.They are distributed among 50 genera. This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial.
The domestic pigeon (Columba livia domestica or Columba livia forma domestica) [2] is a pigeon subspecies that was derived from the rock dove or rock pigeon. The rock pigeon is the world's oldest domesticated bird. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets mention the domestication of pigeons more than 5,000 years ago, as do Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The genus name, Ectopistes, translates as "moving about" or "wandering", while the specific name, migratorius, indicates its migratory habits. [23] The full binomial can thus be translated as "migratory wanderer". The English common name "passenger pigeon" derives from the French word passager, which means "to pass by" in a fleeting manner.
The common wood pigeon was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba and coined the binomial name Columba palumbus. [2] The specific epithet palumbus is an alternate form of the Latin palumbes for a wood pigeon. [3] [4]