Think of a pigeon, and you probably imagine nondescript gray birds that poop all over park benches. But the Wompoo Pigeon is no such thing. Standing more than a foot high, it sports a purple throat, yellow belly and emerald wings streaked with gold. “It’s hard to comprehend how stunning they are,” says photographer Leila Jeffreys.

Three years ago, Jeffreys saw a Wompoo foraging for berries in the forest near Byron Bay, Australia; its brilliant plumage blew her away and inspired her portrait series Ornithurae. It spotlights 15 surprisingly colorful (or otherwise fabulous) members of the Columbidae bird family, which includes pigeons and doves, proving they're not all just winged rats. “They are more than just the gray pigeon—more formally called a rock dove—that most people know,” she says.

Jeffreys started geeking out on avians more than 10 years ago, after buying a field guide and binoculars to identify the birds in her backyard in Sydney. Soon she was traveling to national parks around the country to watch and photograph them. "I had this idea to photograph birds in a way that everybody could appreciate them, not just birdwatchers,” she says. She documented all 14 species of cockatoo in Australia, then just as many native birds of prey like owls and falcons, before what she calls her “pigeon moment” in 2015.

The feathered subjects of Ornithurae reside at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, as well as in the temporary care of wildlife rescue and release organizations like Helping You Help Animals. HUHA is the agency, for instance, that picked up the Kereru wood pigeon Jeffreys photographed after it had gotten tanked on fermented berries. He slept it off, then sat for a portrait the next day looking alert, if a bit sheepish.

Photographing birds is much like photographing people. Jeffreys uses a Phase One medium format camera, three lights, and a pale gray backdrop. She chats or chirps with them to capture their attention and, hopefully, a unique expression or moment—but that only goes so far when you don't speak pigeon. “The birds do what the birds want to do," she says, "and I have to work around that.”

But then, it isn’t all that hard with gorgeous models like the bleeding heart dove—which bears a striking crimson stain on its chest—or the Nicobar pigeon, its neck sheathed in fabulous blue hackles. It seems almost wrong to call it a pigeon at all.

Ornithurae is on view at Purdy Hicks Gallery in London through August 24.

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