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The Band-Tailed Pigeon lives in the coniferous forests along the western coast of North and South America, with two distinct breeding regions in the American West. The largest pigeon in North America, it eats seeds (most notably, acorns), fruit, pinenuts and flowers; it travels long distances to gather food, sometimes flying upwards of five kilometers per day. Like other pigeons and doves, the Band-Tailed Pigeon feeds its young with “crop milk”, which is derived from sloughed-off liquid-filled cells that line the crop. The parasitic louse Columbicola extinctus, which was believed to go extinct with the passenger pigeon, has been discovered on Band-Tailed Pigeons. While it looks similar to the introduced Rock Pigeon, the Band-Tailed Pigeon is native to the Americas.
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