"New Zealand Wood Pigeon, the "Drunkard of Birds

In New Zealand, there is a bird that is like the "drunk" of birds, often getting drunk and not making a fuss when they do, either lying on the ground or falling from the trees.

In 2018, the New Zealand Wood Pigeon won the 2018 Bird of the Year competition for being popular for falling from trees while drunk from time to time.

But wait!

New Zealand wood pigeons can get drunk too? Where do they get their booze from?

It starts with the habits of New Zealand wood pigeons.

New Zealand Wood Pigeon

New Zealand Wood Pigeon is a member of the pigeon family. It looks similar to the pigeon, but it has very beautiful feathers, with greenish-grey feathers on its chest and red feathers on its wings.

They are large birds that can weigh 550-850 grams and feed on fruits, leaves, buds, and flowers, with fruits being an important part of their diet.

After eating, they also bask in the sun while digesting their food, and this causes the food in the bird's stomach to start fermenting. This is because New Zealand wood pigeons are particularly fond of sweet fruits, and the sugar content of fruits is very high. When basking in the sun, the temperature rises to facilitate the fermentation of food in the stomach, and the alcohol produced by the fermentation will make the New Zealand wood pigeons "drunk" and become unconscious, and even unable to maintain the stability of their bodies, swaying from side to side on the branches.

Sometimes New Zealand wood pigeons will fall out of the tree, fall head first into the grass, and then go back to sleep.

The local people are not surprised to see them, and because the wood pigeons are protected animals, the local people will not hurt them but will help them to stop drinking.

However, the other animals living in the area are not so kind, when faced with a drunken New Zealand wood pigeon, they would just treat it as a "free lunch".

New Zealand is made up of two large islands, the South Island, the North Island, and Stewart Island, and some small islands nearby, surrounded by sea and far from the mainland, so the ecosystem here is different from other continents, which means they are very vulnerable to invasion by other creatures.

Cats, ferrets, opossums, and rats are among the invasive species that have come here in the footsteps of humans and have thrived because they have adapted to the local ecosystem and the lack of natural predators, causing serious damage to local organisms.

Among them, New Zealand wood pigeons will pass out on the ground when they are drunk, which was not a big deal in the past, but nowadays, drunken New Zealand wood pigeons become food for invasive animals such as cats and ferrets. Rats and possums, etc., also prey on the New Zealand wood pigeon's young.

Vehicles also easily cause the death of New Zealand wood pigeons. The reason is that New Zealand wood pigeons were hit by passing vehicles while flying at low speed across the highway to eat alfalfa flowers, which once led to the decline of New Zealand's wood pigeon population.

However, the local protection measures for New Zealand wood pigeons are still in place. Nowadays, there is no risk of extinction, but it still depends on human protection.

The importance of New Zealand Wood Pigeon

To us humans, New Zealand wood pigeons are very cute and pretty to look at, the local Maori would even capture them to get their beautiful feathers.

But for ecology, the most important thing about New Zealand wood pigeons is not their cute behavior and good looks, but they are an essential part of the local ecological chain.

The New Zealand wood pigeon is a large member of the pigeon family, has a very large diet, and can swallow larger seeds, and this characteristic is a great help to plants.

Why do plants grow fruits? It is to attract animals to eat, of course, can not let the animals eat for nothing, but after eating the fruit, to excrete the kernels to distant places to help them spread the seeds.

New Zealand wood pigeons are big and can swallow big fruits, which are not eaten by ordinary small birds, which means these plants highly depend on New Zealand wood pigeons to spread their seeds, for example, a kind of berry called Karakul, which is a tree is an important part of New Zealand's coastal forest and an evergreen tree, except that their fruits are big and small-sized birds can peck the berries, but they cannot help them to spread their seeds, while New Zealand wood pigeon can.

Although New Zealand wood pigeons are not in danger of extinction, they are not very fertile and only lay one egg at a time, which means that once their population plummets, it will be very difficult to restore their prosperity, so although they are not in danger of extinction, they still need to be protected.