A couple of months ago I noted that in July last year I had seen what I
thought at the time was a Brown Cuckoo-dove at Howard Springs near Darwin,
but at the time had thought little of it as I then assumed that the sp was
found there.
Well, it isn't, and now I've been doing some limited research and come up
with the following conclusions:
1. Brown Cuckoo-Doves are not normally found in the NT (HANZAB has no records);
2. As I wrote in notebook "Brown Cuckoo-Dove, solitary male, 15m up in tree,
not doing much", I must have seen an individual of a Cuckoo-Dove sp that had
a clear (ie unmarked) breast and have been sufficiently like the BCDs of the
eastern coast for me not to have noted a difference;
3. However this bird cannot have been a Cape York bird as this ssp has grey
on its head;
4. Nor can it have come from the ssp in New Guinea or the Moluccas, none of
which are as dark as eastern Australian birds (data from Beehler's New
Guinea Guide and the Wallacea guide), and indeed BCD don't come very close
to northern Australia at all, as they are not found in the Lesser Sundas.
5. However there is a spp of Cuckoo-Dove, the Ruddy Cuckoo-Dove, M.emiliana,
which gets to the Lesser Sundas, and looks (at least in the illustration in
the Wallacea book) remarkably like a southern Australian BCD;
6. So what I saw could have been a Ruddy Cuckoo-Dove, or a southern
Australian BCD. I reckon the odds are about equal, it's roughly 1200km to
Darwin from the Atherton Tableland and the same distance from Sumbawa to
Darwin. The unlikelihood of a BCD winging it over the Gulf Country and
Arnhem Land is as great as that of a Ruddy CD flying over the Timor Sea, I
reckon.
Anyway this is all pure speuclation as I didn't take photographs or better
notes. But if people are up in the NT they should keep their eyes open for
Cuckoo-Doves. Maybe the individual I saw is still alive and well somewhere
around Darwin.
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John Leonard (Dr),
PO Box 243,
Woden, ACT 2606
"The incredible amount of money it takes to be poor"
Cesar Vallejo
http://www.spirit.net.au/~jleonard
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