It is entirely white or pale cream, apart from the black flight feathers (remiges), part of the tail (rectrices) and spots on the undertail coverts.

The female builds an untidy stick nest in a tree, usually a coconut palm and lays a single white egg, which hatches within 26 to 28 days.

The former has a distinctive yellowish-tinged plumage and a bluish basal half of the bill, and is increasingly treated as a separate species, the yellowish imperial pigeon (D.

Populations dropped rapidly before conservation activists such as Margaret and Arthur Thorsborne led a campaign to protect them and monitor their numbers.

Anecdotal evidence from Weipa, Cape York Peninsula in 1979 was that many birds migrating from Papua New Guinea were shot and pickled as provisions for the merchant shipping fleets moving through the Torres Strait.

The population in Weipa today is thriving as flocks feed voraciously twice daily on Carpentaria Palms in suburban back yards from August each year.

The species remains locally fairly common in parts of its range, and is therefore considered to be of least concern by BirdLife International and IUCN.