23 Photos That Showcase The World's Most Beautiful Doves And Pigeons

I’ve never thought of pigeons as anything more than fairly dull and ubiquitous creatures that leave a lot of poop behind. But some people are really into these creatures – and they come in a variety of shapes and colors, partly because they may be one of the first domesticated birds. In fact, people have been breeding (and cross-breeding) them for hundreds of years. There are even show pigeons.

Cinnamon-bellied imperial pigeon: These pigeons are native to the northern Moluccas in eastern Indonesia. The second part of their formal name – Ducula basilica – means "magnificent" or "splendid" in Latin. The cinnamon-bellied imperial pigeon was formally described in 1854 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte from a specimen collected in Gilolo now Halmahera, the largest island in the Maluku Islands. He coined the current binomial name Ducula basilica.