well yesterday, they were in the new row of wooden aviaries which have the go away bird in and all the starlings but these were in with the golden pheasants next to the go away bird aviaries but they were very shy and kept running off
@bongorob No, it doesn't even look like a lemon, certainly doesn't eat lemons, maybe somebody saw one sitting in a lemon tree once. Lovely birds though.
From “The Complete Book of Southern African Birds” (1989):
Speculation on the origins of its other common name, Lemon Dove, includes the following possibility. In the southern Cape these birds often came out of their forest homes into the citrus orchards that were established by early settlers. It was not that the Dutch settlers preferred lemons to oranges; indeed they had more orange trees. But the Dutch name for an orange is lemoen – so the birds that the Dutch called Orange Doves were called Lemon Doves by the British.
