Our bird trip went to five different habitats in Southern California. The first whole day we went up into the mountains and stopped at various places in the Angeles National Forest. At one of the stops we saw this Band-tailed pigeon. Oddly enough, in winter it has almost exactly the same distribution area as the Black phoebe - a narrow band from California down to northwestern Argentina. At a distance it hardly differs from other pigeons, but if you look closer you will see its colorful head and neck with a yellow bill, apparently dipped in an inkhorn, a red-blue-black eye, and a white ribbon and a fluorescent patch of feathers in the neck. It feeds on acorns, seeds and fruits and often appears in flocks at bird feeders during the winter. (The Band-tailed pigeon is considered to be the closest relative to the extinct Passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, once a very common pigeon in North America and sadly exterminated by humans. The last specimen of the Passenger pigeon died in captivity in 1914.)