Ring-Tailed Pigeon

The ring-tailed pigeon is endemic to Jamaica and most common in the John Crow Mountains, eastern Blue Mountains and the Cockpit Country, which is a 500 square mile area southeast of Montego Bay of limestone with steep hollows separated by conical hills and ridges. The ring-tailed pigeon was initially rated as critically endangered by the IUCN, but has been upgraded to vulnerable. 

This blurry photo was at Hotel Mockingbird Hill. 

The adult male has reddish to pinkish head, neck and underparts and an orange eye surrounded by bare red skin. It has a patch of bronze or metallic green on its hindneck and a gray tail with a slate band across the middle. The female has redder underparts, a less metallic hindneck and an olive or brown cast to the wings. It is so similar in appearance and other characteristics with the band-tailed pigeon (that we have around our home) and the Chilean pigeon that the may form a superspecies. 

This pigeon was in the Blue Mountains and shows the band on the tail and the blue metallic patch on the hindneck. 

I saw three ring-tailed pigeons, but was not able to get good photos. The first was on the grounds at Hotel Mockingbird Hill in Drapers, east of Port Antonio. The second was nearby in San San along the road behind the police station. The third was in the Blue Mountains on the Kingston side about halfway down. 

The pigeon seen in San San. Note the metallic blue patch on the neck.