Petrophassa rufipennis
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~60% in a week ~90%
The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon (Petrophassa rufipennis) is a dark sooty brown pigeon with a distinctive bright chestnut patch on its wing visible in flight. It has distinctive pale lines across its face curving above and below its eye. A species of bird in the family Columbidae, it is very similar in behaviour and habitat to the white-quilled rock pigeon but it is only found on rocky escarpments in western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The chestnut-quilled rock pigeon was observed by the German naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt near the head of the South Alligator River in the Northern Territory of Australia, on 11 November 1845 while on a journey to Port Essington but no specimen was collected. The species was formally described and illustrated in 1898 by the Norwegian naturalist Robert Collett based on a specimen that had been collected from the same locality by the explorer Knut Dahl. Collett coined the binomial name Petrophassa rufipennis.
The common name rock-pigeon is a reference to the association of the genus to tropical sandstone escarpments. The genus name derives from Greek words: petros meaning rock (its preferred habitat... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kakadu National Park | 🇦🇺 Australia |
More parks will be added in future updates.
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon sighting in Kakadu National Park on a given day, based on 451 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 60th most-seen of the 186 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 60%, and over a week to about 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
June and September
In those months about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon in Kakadu National Park on a given day, against about 10% in April and December–January, the lowest months. Those are among Kakadu National Park's driest months, with about 15 mm of rain a month against 350 mm in January. February has too few records to rate.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Kakadu National Park, in our data
Kakadu National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon sightings: about 20% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Columbidae
The closest relatives of the Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon that you can see in Kakadu National Park (family Columbidae, Pigeons and Doves) are Bar-shouldered Dove (about 70%), Peaceful Dove (about 70%) and Torresian Imperial-Pigeon (about 20%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon is recorded against all the birds logged in Kakadu National Park (451 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
