by J. Robert McMorris &Elaine G. KraengelPort Richey, Florida

Breeding the Celebes Golden Heart Dove

together cooked, diced carrots, corn,beets, black-eyed peas, cooked rice, andsoaked raisins. We also used somecooked, diced sweet or white potatoes.We found adding the potatoes made themix softer and wetter than what wewanted so this was left out. We mixlarge batches at one time and store thelnin Zip-lock bags and freeze them. Ourother mix was originally made for ourfinches, but is now fed to all the birds.We mix equal amounts of ground drydog food with high protein baby cerealand add ground-up hard boiled eggincluding shell. This is all mixed until auniform color and a fluffy consistencyis achieved. A note of caution: boil theeggs for at least 20 minutes and let dryfor at least an hour on some kind ofabsorbent material. The eggs when hotretain too much moisture and, if addedto the dry mixture at that point, willturn the mix into a doughy mess. This isalso made up in large batches and put inzip-lock bags and stored in the freezer.

Our usual morning routine is to chopinto snlall pieces a number of applesand/or pears and add dry wheat germand dry quick oats to which we add theegg food mix. We also use endive forour greens which is chopped into smallpieces. We chop fruits such as plums,grapes, peaches, strawberries, bananas,melon oranges, etc. depending onavailability. Once all this is chopped insmall pieces we distribute the variousmixes to individual dishes.

Our birds are fed once a day in themorning. With the Celebes and black­napes we use approximately 2 table­spoons of the vegetable mix and 2 table­spoons of the egg and apple mix. Weadd the greens and the fruit mix and wehave also used crumbled Moist & Meaty

Mature Celebes golden heart dove(Gallicolomba tristigmata).

than a month at a friend's and appearedhealthy.

We relea ed them into the aviarieswhen we got home. The superbs "\\Tereplaced into a separate flight by them­selves. The black-napes and the Celebes(as we have come to call them) wereplaced together into a well plantedaviary measuring 18' long x 10' wide x8 high with a pond approximately 3-4'across. This aviary is also home to anumber of different finch speciesincluding chestnut-breasted, lavender­fire finches, pintail parrot finches,pearly-headed silver bills, and a pair ofgreen avadavats. On the ground thereare two enezuelan semi-aquatic turtlesRhinoclemmys sp.). To date there hasbeen no interaction of any concernbetween the turtles and birds. In fact, inanother aviary with a large pond wehave a number of aquatic species ofturtles with our Pekin robins andtanagers. We have had no problems withthis combination. However, someturtles can be aggressive so you must becareful which turtles you combine withyour birds.

The Celebes and the black-napessettled down fairly quickly, with thequail doves occupying the ground andthe fruit doves staying in the vegetationwhere they sit motionless for longperiods of time.

Our diet originated through a numberof sources; a friend who already hadsome of the Celebes, and any readingmaterial we could find. We then com­bined what we felt was the best of eachand settled on the following: Inix

Just fledged golden heart dOL e.

According to the literature theCelebes golden heart dove (Gallico­lomba tristigmata) ha seldom if ever,been successfully imported into thiscountry... that is until early 1985. Thebirds were obtained by one source over­seas and imported through two partiesinto the United States; one in Floridaand the other in California. Quite a fewbirds have now been imported so that agood captive nucleus is available toensure the success of this handsomespecies in aviculture.

Related to the golden heart dove ofew Guinea and the bleeding heart

doves of the Philippine (G. luzonica),the Celebes species is indeed a desirableaddition. The forehead is a brightgolden yellow and the rest of the top ofthe head is a powder blue-green fadingto a rusty brown down the nape andmantle. The throat and belly are mostlya dirty white with another patch ofyellow on the breast. At the base of thenape there is a maroon band (in thenominate form). Our birds have theband broken into a blotch on each side.Thi ,plus the intensity of the yellow onthe breast shield suggest our birds arethe subspecie .

When we obtained our birds in Feb­ruary 1985, there were several birdsavailable, however we could see twobirds one slightly larger than the otherswith a bit more color, that tended to staytogether. We thought that they might bea true pair. At the same time we alsoobtained a pair of black-nape fruit dovesand a pair of superb fruit doves. Thesebirds had been quarantined for more

8 December/January 198

dog food, which is a brand of semi­moist individually wrapped dog foodmade up of meat and cheese. Vitaminsare sprinkled over the food beforeserving the birds. (We use Nektonproducts mixing Nekton S., E., and MSAtogether in a large shaker.)

Since the quail doves and finchesrequire seed, we supply a large crockwith a seed mixture. Our mix is 1/2white millet, 1/3 small finch seed, 1/3canary seed and 1/3 hook-bill treat(which contains safflower, hemp, milo,and millet. Their dishes are placed on alow platform about 1-1/2 feet above theground. We also place a dish on a flatrock directly on the ground. This waythe birds have two feeding stations andthe turtles can also get at the soft food.The Celebes feed readily at both sta­tions. They will use higher feed plat­forms as we have other Celebes indifferent aviaries that do so.

Shortly after the doves were intro­duced into the aviary, several nestswere positioned at various heightsfrom approximately a foot off theground up to approximately 6 feet.Since nothing was known about thebreeding habits of the Celebes in thewild, we decided to position the neststo cover all possibilities.

During the first week in May webegan to notice the male chasing thefemale and the birds began to call morefrequently. The female could be seen upin the branches more often. This couldbe either an attempt by the female toescape the pursuit of the male or shewas looking for a nesting site. One ofthe birds, probably the male, was seencarrying the nesting material, some ofwhich was placed into the seed crock.On May 12th, the female was seensitting on the nest against the back wallof the aviary, approximately 3-4 feetfrom the ground. The followingmorning when the female left the nestto feed, one egg could be seen. Theliterature we read stated that all Galli­colomba lay either one or two whiteeggs. The Celebes quail doves, we knownow, are the exception to the rule. Ourbirds lay one brown egg slightly smallerthan a small chicken egg. It appears thatthe female does most, if not all of theincubation, as we never saw the malesitting. There is a possibility that themale may have sat for some periodsduring the day while we were at work.Several individuals who have since bredthis species indicate the male does sitduring the day. The female would leavethe nest every morning for about 20minutes to feed. During this time thenest appeared to be left unattended by

the male. Temperatures during Maywould reach 100 OF during the day inthat end of the aviary.

Our first egg hatched on May 27thafter a 15 day incubation. The youngsquab was somewhat "hairy" inappearance and rusty red in color. Theyoung also grow very quickly with thebird fledging onJune 9th (14 days).

We were somewhat nervous at thistime as the young Celebes, by com­parison with psittacines and finches,was mostly unfeathered when itfledged. It had feathered out on itswings but the body feathers weremostly absent. The female could beseen feeding the baby so we left it alone.Within a few days the young bird wasmoving about the aviary and beginningto pick at food.

The second nesting began July 24thwith hatching occurring approximatelyAugust 10th. We were attending theA.FA. Convention in San Francisco atthe time, so we are uncertain of theexact day. We returned home August23rd to find this squab dead on theaviary floor. It was developed to thestage where it should have fledged. Itsdeath may be due to serious discrep­ancies in the feeding of the birds whilewe were gone, also the pond had beenallowed to become polluted. Onceeverything was corrected, the birds con­tinued to produce, with the thirdnesting beginning October 3rd, andhatching on the 16th or 17th. It fledgedNovember 4th without incident. Thefourth nesting began on December 17thand hatched December 31st. It alsofledged without any problems.

At this point, the aviary contained thebreeding pair of Celebes plus their threesurviving offspring. It was beginning toget crowded. The first baby appeared tobe a female, judging by size, and nowresembled the adults completely. Themale began pursuit again duringJanuary, however, we are uncertainwhether he was chasing mother ordaughter. An egg was laid on February10th but was not incubated by the birds.This egg was found a few days laterbroken on the ground. Another egg waslaid on the 27th of February and againwas not incubated. This egg was pulleda few days later and placed in the incu­bator; it failed to develop. At this timewe removed the last two young fromthe aviary. Not being able to distinguishthe first born from the breeding female,we decided to leave her with the adults.On March 21st another egg was laid andunlike the previous two, the youngfemale began to sit on the egg thesecond day. Her sitting was eratic,

leaving the nest several times during theday. We have no definite reason why thelast three eggs were not incubated bythe birds, but can only guess, i.e.; over­crowding is one possible reason, thehibiscus where the nest is located waspruned back during the latter part ofFebruary, after the first two non­attended eggs were laid. It is also pos­sible that the young female was layingthe eggs. The last egg was finallyremoved after 20 days and proved to befertile but never fully developed. Ourlast baby was hatched on the 20th ofApril.

At the time of this writing we have asecond pair of wild-caught Celebes thatare showing interest in nesting. Our goalwill be to produce offspring from thissecond pair to breed with those thathave already been produced. In this waywe will be able to keep the gene pool asvaried as possible.

In summary, we consider the Celebesgolden heart dove to be an excellentaddition to planted aviaries. They arepeaceful with smaller birds, and otherdoves. It is worth noting that the blacknape fruit doves are nesting in the sameaviary, often using the Celebes' nestbetween their nestings. The two speciesco-exist together without problems. Wehave no experience with keeping twobreeding males in the same aviary orwith mixing other ground doves withthem.

We feel our diet is easy to use and maybe varied according to availability. Wehave friends who have tried this but areusing the canned vegetables instead offresh and are having good results. In factother breeders use only seed, hardboiled egg and grated cheese. Temper­atures in our breeding aviaries range upto about 110 OF during the summer anddown to about 35 OF in the cold nightsduring the winter. The birds are pro­tected from the cold drafts. They are,therefore, very tolerant of a wide rangeof temperatures.

We are very interested in workingwith fruit doves and ground doves andwould be interested in hearing fromother people who keep these types ofdoves or are interested in beginningwith these birds. It is a sad note thatthese beautiful birds, particularly thefruit doves, have not gained morepopularity among the aviculturists.They really are not difficult to keep anda joy to behold.[Editor's Note: The breeding describedabove may be a first U.S. breeding of thisspecies. Anyone with knowledge to thecontrary please contact Dale Thompsonat the AFA home office.] •

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