This pigeon, called Waalia, frequents the low parts of Abyssinia, where it perches upon the highest trees, and sits quietly in the shade during the heat of the day, so that it is difficult to discover it, unless it has been seen to alight. They likewise fly extremely high, in great flocks, and for the most part affect a species of the beech-tree, upon the mast or fruit of which they seem chiefly to live for food. They are rarely seen in the mountainous part of the country unless in their passage, for in the beginning of the rainy season, in the Kolla, they emigrate to the south and S. W. In this direction they are seen flying for days together. It is supposed the high country, even in the fair season, is too cold for them; and their seeking another habitation towards the Atlantic Ocean, where it is warm, and where the rains do not fall so copiously in that season as they do in the Kolla in Abyssinia, makes this conjecture still more probable.

They perch for most part upon the tops of trees, beyond the sphere of the action of Abyssinian powder; but they sit so close together that I have sometimes shot six or more at the discharge of a single barrel. The rest immediately plunge down almost to touch you, apparently ignorant whence so unaccustomed a sound comes; there, if you are a good marksman, and alert, you have another chance, though but a short one, for they immediately tower to an immoderate height, and never alight in sight unless they are wounded. They are exceedingly fat, and by far the best of all pigeons; when they fall from a height, without life, upon their back, I have known the flesh on each side of their breast-bone separated by the concussion, and the fat upon their rump bruised like the pulp of an orange.

Although this is undoubtedly a pigeon, the Abyssinians do not eat it; nay, after it is dead they will not touch it, for fear of defiling themselves, any more than they would do a dead horse. The waalia is less than the common blue pigeon, but larger than the turtle-dove. Its whole back, and some of the short feathers of its wings, are of a beautiful unvarnished green, lighter and livelier than an olive. Its head and neck are of a deader green, with still less lustre. Its beak is of a bluish white, with large nostrils; the eye black, with an iris of dark orange. The pinion, or top of its wing, is a beautiful pompadour. The large feathers of the wing are black; the outer edge of the wing narrowly marked with white; the tail a pale, dirty blue; below the tail it is spotted with brown and white. Its thighs are white, with small spots of brown; its belly a lively yellow. Its legs and feet are a yellowish brown. Its feet stronger and larger than is generally found in this kind of bird. I never heard it coo, or make any noise. I killed this, and many others, in our road to Tcherkin. In M. de Buffon’s collection I see a bird resembling this, coming from the west of Africa, as I remember; but his birds in general are so very ill-drawn, and his coloured ones so shamefully daubed, that nothing certain can be founded upon resemblance.