Yellow Footed Green Pigeon

Description, behavior, feeding and habitat

     The Yellow-footed Green Pigeon (Treron phoenicoptera) also known as Yellow-legged Green Pigeon is a common species of Green Pigeon found in the Indian Subcontinent. It is also the State bird of Maharashtra, India. In local language it is called Hariyal. 

     The species feeds on fruits of a large variety of fruit trees including a number of species of Ficus. They forage in flocks. In the early morning they are often seen sunning on the tops of emergent trees in dense forest areas.

     Amazing to observe these Green Pigeons near our house, in a flock of 5 to 6, 2 juveniles, 1 sub adult and 2 adults, commonly flying late evening. Sometimes, they choose to perch in the tamarind tree opposite to our house, in Kulai, Mangalore, from where I could get wonderful images of this new bird to our area, adjacent to our Terrace. They are quite silent and arrive without making any calls, noise. 

     I have observed them sitting silently, sometimes feeding on Tamarind from that tree. Palm squirrels are commonly present in that Tamarind tree and one Pigeon almost shooed away one squirrel when it tried to eat tamarind which is below the Pigeon's perched spot in the tree. 

     Nature has been gifting me with amazing phenomenons to observe, understand and better my birding skills everytime and I am thankful to mother nature for this beautiful bird, which is a dense forest endemic. Thankfully again, we have quite a lot of trees and greenery in our residential area, which attracts many birds, all through the year. I have used a Canon EF 300mm F4L IS USM lens with a Tamron 1.4x extender on my Canon EOS 7D SLR for this capture and, in one of the images I have used an Kenko Extension tube 12mm to get slightly closer to the bird, which was part of my experimentation of my friend Ajith Kamath's extension tube, which I borrowed for testing some macro photography.