Tooth-billed pigeon sighted for first time in 10 years

January 2014: One of the world’s least-known and rarest birds, the Tooth-billed Pigeon has been sighted on the Samoan island of Savai’i by researchers.The young Tooth-billed Pigeon Didunculus strigirostris, was photographed by a team from the Samoan Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE), and is the first confirmed sighting in almost a decade.The odd-looking tooth-billed pigeon or manumea, as it is locally known, is endemic to Samoa and is the country’s national bird. BirdLife lists it as Endangered due to its small, fragmented range and population. It has declined rapidly over the last 20 years as a result of hunting and habitat loss.

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The Little Dodo of Samoa

The Mauritian dodo is the iconic emblem for both island conservation and extinction, sadly one of the birds lost from the Mascarene archipelago. One might often wonder how this strange bird could have originally been descended from a pigeon, but in Samoa we find the tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris), otherwise known as the little dodo, or locally the Manumea. This strange pigeon is the only member of its genus (a measure of evolutionary uniqueness), and is also the national bird of Samoa.

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