The better-known was a female which was sketched by Georg Forster at Tanna during the second circumnavigation by James Cook to the South Sea in August 1774.

Another specimen, a male, was recently determined to have been part of the Banksian Collection at the Natural History Museum in London.

In the male, the forehead, supercilium and lower part of the head, as well as the throat and the breast were white as in the nominate race of the Polynesian ground dove, and its belly was reddish-black.

When the Forsters analyzed the crop or gizzard of the dead dove they noticed that it contained a wild nutmeg (Myristica inutilis).

The only remaining evidence of its existence, apart from the paintings, is an entry in Forster's notes: "...behind these fields we came into a forest [where] a dove of a new [kind] was shot."