Snow Pigeon

The snow pigeon is a grey, black, pale brown and white pigeon of the hills of central Asia. It has a blackish head contrasting with a white neck collar, white underparts shading to ashy on the abdomen and sullied with buff, a brownish-grey back with a white patch on the lower back, and pale grey wings with three brown bands. Young birds have narrow, pale buff margins to the feathers of the upperparts and wings (Wikipedia, general species account).

One subspecies occurs in the western Himalaya from western Afghanistan to Sikkim and another in the mountains of eastern Tibet, from eastern Nan Shan to Yunnan and extreme northern Myanmar. Birds forage in open country in pairs or small groups, feeding on grain, buds, shoots, berries and seeds, and often feed in fields by day but roost on cliffs. They breed in colonies, building untidy stick nests in crevices, caves or ledges on cliff faces and usually laying two white eggs. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority: a resident and altitudinal migrant of alpine and cold desert with a long-term decline of about 58% and a stable current trend (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).