Crowned Pigeons and People

Abstract

My first really coherent memory of birds in zoos was probably around 1964. I could still be carried around then. My father was holding me when he asked a keeper what two birds were. I still see them clearly in my mind's eye, a few feet from each other in the Rainforest Aviary at the San Diego Zoo. I remember my dad repeating what the keeper said: A Cock of the Rock and a Victoria Crowned Pigeon. I remember the Cock of the Rock had a dark edge to its crest, so I know I saw a Guiana (Rupicola rupicola). On the other hand, I clearly remember the words "Victoria Crowned Pigeon" as well as I remember that piercing red eye under that unique crest.

Crowned Pigeons have captured the imagination for a long time. The first encyclopedia published in the United States appeared in 1798 and was titled Encyclopedia, or a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature. It was essentially an unauthorized version, with added text and pictures, of the Third Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (which had just been completed in 1797). The publisher was Thomas Dobson (1751-1823) who, in 1783, emigrated from Scotland to Philadelphia, where he established a very successful printing press. Under the heading of "Colurnba, the Pigeons" is a lengthy account of "The Coronata or Great Crowned Pigeon": "This species inhabits the Molucca Isles and New Guinea, and has been brought to England alive. Buffon mentions five having been at once alive in France ... In France they were never observed to lay eggs, nor in Holland, though they were kept for some time; but Scopoli assures us that the male approaches the female with the head bent into the breast, making a noise more like lowing than cooing, and that they not only made a nest on trees, in the menagerie where they were kept, but laid eggs. The nest was composed of hay and stalks. The female never sat, but stood upon the eggs; and he supposed it was from this cause alone that there was no produce" (Dobson, 1798).

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (1723-1788) was a physician who also became a pioneering systematic zoologist and botanist. His Anni Historica Naturales, published from 1769 to 1772 is an important early work of ornithology. While one might presume the above mentioned "menagerie" where the pigeons nested was in Italy, it could just have well been in Austria, or some other Hapsburg dominion, since Scopoli traveled and worked all over the Holy Roman Empire.

I am not aware of an English translation of Scopoli's Anni Historica Naturales. I have managed to puzzle out some of the French in Volume II of Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux, by Georges-Louis Le Clerc, Comte de Buff on (1707-1788), another pioneering zoologist, who published the first of the 36 volumes of his Histoire Naturelle in 1749. The nine volumes on birds appeared from 1770-1783. The second of these volumes, which includes the pigeons, was published in 1771. In it we learn that the above-mentioned five birds that Buffon saw alive together in Paris were imported by "Monsieur le Prince de Soubise," otherwise known as Charles de Rohan (1715-1787), who, Wikipedia informs us, was a "military man, a minister to Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, and a notorious libertine." Buffon notes they all looked like each other, and "d'aileurs ils ne pendent pas," which my friend Pierre, Comte de Chabannes, translates as "they don't even lay eggs" (Buffon, 1771).

Until 1884, when Germany and England established Protectorates over the eastern half of the island, the Dutch held a monopoly over the animals ofN ew Guinea, which they obtained through trade networks established, long before the arrival of Europeans, by the Bandanese civilization of the Moluccas. The Bandanese obtained Bird of Paradise skins from New Guinea in exchange for doth from Java and India, which in turn had been exchanged for nutmeg. Nutmeg was a very valuable spice in the days before modern food preservation, and it grew only in the Moluccas, so when the Dutch subjugated the Banda Islands in 1609, they immediately established themselves as a world power. Regarding Crowned Pigeons, Thomas Dobson's Encyclopedia reports: "The Dutch at the Moluccas call them crownvogel. Monsieur Sonnerat, as well as Dampier, found these in plenty at New Guinea; and it is probable that they were originally transported from the place into Banda, from whence the Dutch chiefly now procure them" (Dobson, 1798).

Le Comte de Buffon was closely associated with the Royal Menagerie at Versailles, and responsible for research there. The Versailles Menagerie, established in 1665, featured great numbers of exotic birds, such as West African Crowned and Demoiselle Cranes, Old World White Pelicans, and Old World Purple Gallinules (Loiselle, 1912a, Robbins, 2002) From Buffon's remarks concerning le Prince de Soubise's birds, it appears that as of 1771 Crowned Pigeons had yet been kept there. However, in 1792, there was one at Versailles, which, along with "seven or eight peafowl, and two dozen chickens," was all that remained of the once great bird collection, three years into the French Revolution (Loisel, 1912a, 161).

On Sept. 19, 1792, two days before the Monarchy was abolished and the French Republic declared, the General Overseer for Versailles (who history only records as "Couturier") wrote a letter to Jacques-Henri Bernadin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), Director of the newly established Natural History Museum at le Jardin des Plantes (no longer le Jardin du Roi!), announcing that the Menagerie would be closed and the animals destroyed. Couturier invited the Museum Director to take his pick of the soon to be deceased specimens, drawing his attention especially to "un superbe rhinoceros" (Loisel, 1912a, Robbins, 2002). Rather than responding with enthusiasm, Bernardin de SaintPierre, a widely admired author of progressive romance novels, was horrified. After a hurriedly arranged trip from Paris to Versailles, in the company of two of his botanists, he published, at his own expense, a pamphlet titled, A note on the necessity of adding a menagerie to the National Botanical Gardens in Paris, and sent it to the Minister of the Interior in December 1792. (Louis XVI went to the guillotine that January). Due to the popularity of his novels, anything written by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was bound to attract attention and be discussed. He made an eloquent and ultimately successful case for a National Zoo for the New Republic (Robbins, 2002). Among his arguments was that the opportunity was presented for the establishment of new and interesting domesticated animals. In particular he mentioned the "pigeon couronne des Indes" as an excellent candidate-provided a mate could be obtained for it (Robbins, 2002, 217).

As it happened, the Crowned Pigeon never made it to the new National menagerie. The only animals that did finally arrive from Versailles in April, 1794, were single...

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References

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