The Nicobar pigeon or Nicobar dove (Caloenas nicobarica, Car: ma-kūö-kö) is a bird found on small islands and in coastal regions from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, east through the Malay Archipelago, to the Solomons and Palau. It is the only living member of the genus Caloenas alongside the extinct spotted green pigeon, and is the closest living relative of the extinct dodo and Rodrigues solitaire. Taxonomy In 1738, the English naturalist Eleazar Albin included a description and two illustrations of the Nicobar pigeon in his A Natural History of Birds. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the Nicobar pigeon with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Columba nicobarica and cited Albin's work. The species is now placed in the genus Caloenas erected by English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1840 with the Nicobar pigeon...