In Praise of the Ordinary: Mourning Doves
It is no great secret that, as a naturalist, I deeply enjoy traveling to beautiful wilderness destinations in search of birds, nature, and adventure. Any other year, this would be the season for spring break trips, hiking adventures, spring migration, the beginning of camping season and devising summer travel plans. But not this year.
With a global pandemic on our hands, this spring is shaping up quite differently from what any of us ever imagined. Since my county has implemented a "stay at home" order, with strict guidelines banning any non-essential travel, my birding efforts for the foreseeable future will be restricted to my backyard, and a few green spaces within walking distance.
Driving out to the river or local wildlife refuges, even within the county, falls under the category of non-essential travel and is prohibited. This is hard for me, especially at the most beautiful and enticing time of year in the Valley, when all of creation bursts into bud and bloom and birdsong, beckoning us to venture out into the wild.
But, please, resist! I strongly urge you to comply with these temporary regulations and help stop the spread of this virus!
Regardless of where you live, there are almost certainly birds that share your space. I live in a Central Valley town, on a quarter-acre property nestled in a mid-century subdivision. We have added native plants, a few trees, bird baths and bird feeders, but it is by no means stellar bird habitat! There is no woodland edge nearby, no grassland or shrubland, no natural water source, not a scrap of open habitat beyond a run-of-the mill park, planted with expanses of lawn and non-native trees. Even so, I have recorded 51 species of birds living in and flying over my yard - a number I'm quite pleased with!
Some of these birds, like Black-headed Grosbeaks, stumble across my trees as they pass through on migration; other migrants, like Sandhill Cranes, stay high above on their passage through the Valley, proving my town lies in their ancient migratory pathway. Some birds, like Cedar Waxwings and White-crowned Sparrows, visit our mild Valley only for the winter, while others are year-round residents.
One of North America's most common and abundant birds, the Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) is one such resident, a constant companion around homes and neighborhoods nationwide. The haunting yet peaceful call of the Mourning Dove, a soulful, sweet lament, is a common sound in many towns where these lovely birds coexist alongside humans. With orders to stay home, it is high time we pay attention to the beautifully ordinary, commonplace, everyday birds, like the humble Mourning Dove.
Mourning Doves are part of a larger family of birds, Columbidae, within class Aves. The Columbids include the pigeons and doves, fourteen species of which are found in North America. (Worldwide, Columbidae includes just over 300 species!) The common pigeon of cities, introduced from Europe and formally known as the Rock Pigeon (since an attempt to rechristen it with the more appealing name of "Rock Dove" didn't stick) is a close relative of the Mourning Dove, as is California's native forest-dwelling Band-tailed Pigeon, the diminutive Common Ground Dove of the South, a couple of very localized species in Florida and Texas (the White-crowned Pigeon and the White-tipped Dove, respectively) and the extinct Passenger Pigeon.
Across most of the United States, the bird most likely to be confused with our darling Mourning Dove is the larger, less-melodious non-native Eurasian Collared-Dove, which was released/escaped from captivity in the Bahamas in the 1970's, reached Florida in the 1980's, and has since expanded its range across most of the US. Sound is an easy way to differentiate between the two doves without even seeing them: Eurasian Collared-Doves produce a rhythmic "one-two-three" coo and nasally call. Listen to the sounds of the Eurasian Collared-Dove here, and compare them to the song of the Mourning Dove here. Aside from voice, Eurasian Collared-Doves are larger in size, lighter in color, with a squared-off tail and a distinctive black collar around the nape of the neck.
Mourning Doves are certainly not brilliantly flamboyant or gaudy in their beauty: they take a much more subtle approach, delicately colored in the softest shades of tan and gray, tastefully adorned with touches of black and white. Their dark doe-eyes are rimmed with pale blue, and males show a subtle blue-green and blush-pink iridescence on their necks when the light hits them just right (which I tried and failed to capture in these photos!)
As seeds make up the bulk of the Mourning Dove's diet, they are eager visitors to backyard bird feeders offering millet, sunflower, Nyjer and other seeds. Stuffing their crops with seed, Mourning Doves move away to a safe place to slowly process and digest the seeds, which are ground up with the help of grit the birds also ingest. While they are typically ground-feeding birds, gobbling up what falls beneath feeders and onto the ground under wild plants, doves also appreciate platform-style bird feeders. They will delight backyard bird watchers for hours by their feeding antics... all the while, eating you out of house and home with the amount of seed they are able to consume! According to Cornell's website, All About Birds, Mourning Doves eat between 12 and 20 percent of their 3.5 to 6 ounce body weight each day.
My backyard doves are gluttonous little beasts (rather like a black lab we used to have), but they are eternally endearing.
Doves construct flimsy nests just about anywhere they take a fancy to, from the tops of fire extinguisher boxes and light fixtures, to hanging planters of flowers, building ledges, and, more traditionally, in trees, shrubs and vines. They are generally docile and unconcerned about proximity to humans. One monogamous pair of doves may raise up to six clutches, of two eggs each, over the course of their lengthy breeding season. Doves spend about two weeks incubating eggs; once the young hatch, they remain in the nest, growing rapidly, for another two weeks. Parents continue to feed young for another two or three weeks after they have left the nest.
Doves and pigeons are unique in that they produce a substance called "crop milk," secreted by the walls of the crop, which they feed to their young for the first five to ten days of their lives. Both male and female birds produce this substance, which is high in proteins and fats that young doves need and would otherwise lack in a diet of vegetable matter. (Most other seed-eating birds switch to hunting insects during the breeding season, in order to meet the nutritional needs of their young.)
As a species that has done well for itself as human settlement has expanded through the last couple of centuries, Mourning Doves are equally common in open country and suburbs. The global population of Mourning Doves in North and Central America is estimated to be over 100 million birds. However, perhaps surprisingly, the Mourning Dove is North America's most-hunted game bird; hunters shoot around 20 million Mourning Doves annually, which totally boggles my mind. Though their populations are monitored and their numbers seem to be doing fine even in the face of such pressure, lead poisoning continues to be a largely unseen threat as ground-foraging doves pick up lead shot that has fallen to the ground in heavily hunted areas. There are a number of studies on this topic, and one record shows a single dove ingested over 40 lead pellets.
So, let us not forget the Passenger Pigeon, a close relative of the Mourning Dove that was once so numerous in North American forests that a single flock took hours to pass by, darkening the sky and breaking branches in trees with the weight of their sheer numbers. Hunted mercilessly from the 1820's through the 1870's, Passenger Pigeons were not able to sustain their populations in the face of such intense and unrelenting persecution. The last bird was seen in the wild in 1900, and the species was declared extinct in 1914. The lesson of the Passenger Pigeon, which I hope we will not forget, is that regardless of how widespread and abundant a species is, no matter how resilient and prolific, humans are more so. All species are vulnerable, despite how numerous they may seem, in the face of our tendency to take, control, dominate, and subdue the land and its creatures. We are ultimately entirely responsible.
We're having a rainy day today in the Valley (that's an understatement: it is absolutely pouring rain, with thunder and lightening the likes of which we don't often see in these parts!), and when I looked outside to check on my birds, I spotted the dove pictured above, looking soaked and rather miserable. (They really are resilient and quite waterproof, though!)
Then I noticed the second bird, shown below, with a completely different attitude about the rain! Sitting on the fence, face upturned toward the pouring rain, this dove looked, to me, to be in sheer ecstasy, literally bathing in the joyous rapture that is spring rain.
The more closely I look at them and the longer I live alongside them, the more I love Mourning Doves. This just proves that there is always a silver, or in this case, a dove-colored lining, since I suppose I have the quarantine to thank for all the time I've spent watching the doves lately!
And now, for some parting shots of Dove Yoga:
What are your favorite plain-old ordinary backyard birds? I'd love to know!
 |
| A Mourning Dove perched on feeders in my backyard |
With a global pandemic on our hands, this spring is shaping up quite differently from what any of us ever imagined. Since my county has implemented a "stay at home" order, with strict guidelines banning any non-essential travel, my birding efforts for the foreseeable future will be restricted to my backyard, and a few green spaces within walking distance.
Driving out to the river or local wildlife refuges, even within the county, falls under the category of non-essential travel and is prohibited. This is hard for me, especially at the most beautiful and enticing time of year in the Valley, when all of creation bursts into bud and bloom and birdsong, beckoning us to venture out into the wild.
But, please, resist! I strongly urge you to comply with these temporary regulations and help stop the spread of this virus!
 |
| A lesson from the doves: We have all the seed we can eat, right here! Why leave?? |
Some of these birds, like Black-headed Grosbeaks, stumble across my trees as they pass through on migration; other migrants, like Sandhill Cranes, stay high above on their passage through the Valley, proving my town lies in their ancient migratory pathway. Some birds, like Cedar Waxwings and White-crowned Sparrows, visit our mild Valley only for the winter, while others are year-round residents.
One of North America's most common and abundant birds, the Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) is one such resident, a constant companion around homes and neighborhoods nationwide. The haunting yet peaceful call of the Mourning Dove, a soulful, sweet lament, is a common sound in many towns where these lovely birds coexist alongside humans. With orders to stay home, it is high time we pay attention to the beautifully ordinary, commonplace, everyday birds, like the humble Mourning Dove.
Mourning Doves are part of a larger family of birds, Columbidae, within class Aves. The Columbids include the pigeons and doves, fourteen species of which are found in North America. (Worldwide, Columbidae includes just over 300 species!) The common pigeon of cities, introduced from Europe and formally known as the Rock Pigeon (since an attempt to rechristen it with the more appealing name of "Rock Dove" didn't stick) is a close relative of the Mourning Dove, as is California's native forest-dwelling Band-tailed Pigeon, the diminutive Common Ground Dove of the South, a couple of very localized species in Florida and Texas (the White-crowned Pigeon and the White-tipped Dove, respectively) and the extinct Passenger Pigeon.
Across most of the United States, the bird most likely to be confused with our darling Mourning Dove is the larger, less-melodious non-native Eurasian Collared-Dove, which was released/escaped from captivity in the Bahamas in the 1970's, reached Florida in the 1980's, and has since expanded its range across most of the US. Sound is an easy way to differentiate between the two doves without even seeing them: Eurasian Collared-Doves produce a rhythmic "one-two-three" coo and nasally call. Listen to the sounds of the Eurasian Collared-Dove here, and compare them to the song of the Mourning Dove here. Aside from voice, Eurasian Collared-Doves are larger in size, lighter in color, with a squared-off tail and a distinctive black collar around the nape of the neck.
Mourning Doves are certainly not brilliantly flamboyant or gaudy in their beauty: they take a much more subtle approach, delicately colored in the softest shades of tan and gray, tastefully adorned with touches of black and white. Their dark doe-eyes are rimmed with pale blue, and males show a subtle blue-green and blush-pink iridescence on their necks when the light hits them just right (which I tried and failed to capture in these photos!)
 |
| Resplendent with a subtle beauty |
As seeds make up the bulk of the Mourning Dove's diet, they are eager visitors to backyard bird feeders offering millet, sunflower, Nyjer and other seeds. Stuffing their crops with seed, Mourning Doves move away to a safe place to slowly process and digest the seeds, which are ground up with the help of grit the birds also ingest. While they are typically ground-feeding birds, gobbling up what falls beneath feeders and onto the ground under wild plants, doves also appreciate platform-style bird feeders. They will delight backyard bird watchers for hours by their feeding antics... all the while, eating you out of house and home with the amount of seed they are able to consume! According to Cornell's website, All About Birds, Mourning Doves eat between 12 and 20 percent of their 3.5 to 6 ounce body weight each day.
My backyard doves are gluttonous little beasts (rather like a black lab we used to have), but they are eternally endearing.
 |
| "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that last sunflower seed..." |
Doves construct flimsy nests just about anywhere they take a fancy to, from the tops of fire extinguisher boxes and light fixtures, to hanging planters of flowers, building ledges, and, more traditionally, in trees, shrubs and vines. They are generally docile and unconcerned about proximity to humans. One monogamous pair of doves may raise up to six clutches, of two eggs each, over the course of their lengthy breeding season. Doves spend about two weeks incubating eggs; once the young hatch, they remain in the nest, growing rapidly, for another two weeks. Parents continue to feed young for another two or three weeks after they have left the nest.
 | |
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Doves and pigeons are unique in that they produce a substance called "crop milk," secreted by the walls of the crop, which they feed to their young for the first five to ten days of their lives. Both male and female birds produce this substance, which is high in proteins and fats that young doves need and would otherwise lack in a diet of vegetable matter. (Most other seed-eating birds switch to hunting insects during the breeding season, in order to meet the nutritional needs of their young.)
 | |
|
As a species that has done well for itself as human settlement has expanded through the last couple of centuries, Mourning Doves are equally common in open country and suburbs. The global population of Mourning Doves in North and Central America is estimated to be over 100 million birds. However, perhaps surprisingly, the Mourning Dove is North America's most-hunted game bird; hunters shoot around 20 million Mourning Doves annually, which totally boggles my mind. Though their populations are monitored and their numbers seem to be doing fine even in the face of such pressure, lead poisoning continues to be a largely unseen threat as ground-foraging doves pick up lead shot that has fallen to the ground in heavily hunted areas. There are a number of studies on this topic, and one record shows a single dove ingested over 40 lead pellets.
So, let us not forget the Passenger Pigeon, a close relative of the Mourning Dove that was once so numerous in North American forests that a single flock took hours to pass by, darkening the sky and breaking branches in trees with the weight of their sheer numbers. Hunted mercilessly from the 1820's through the 1870's, Passenger Pigeons were not able to sustain their populations in the face of such intense and unrelenting persecution. The last bird was seen in the wild in 1900, and the species was declared extinct in 1914. The lesson of the Passenger Pigeon, which I hope we will not forget, is that regardless of how widespread and abundant a species is, no matter how resilient and prolific, humans are more so. All species are vulnerable, despite how numerous they may seem, in the face of our tendency to take, control, dominate, and subdue the land and its creatures. We are ultimately entirely responsible.
 |
| Mourning Doves are built to weather the storm |
We're having a rainy day today in the Valley (that's an understatement: it is absolutely pouring rain, with thunder and lightening the likes of which we don't often see in these parts!), and when I looked outside to check on my birds, I spotted the dove pictured above, looking soaked and rather miserable. (They really are resilient and quite waterproof, though!)
Then I noticed the second bird, shown below, with a completely different attitude about the rain! Sitting on the fence, face upturned toward the pouring rain, this dove looked, to me, to be in sheer ecstasy, literally bathing in the joyous rapture that is spring rain.
 |
| Bathing in the joyous rapture that is spring rain |
And now, for some parting shots of Dove Yoga:
What are your favorite plain-old ordinary backyard birds? I'd love to know!
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