Mourning Dove on North Ronaldsay

02/05/2019

At 6 pm on 29 April, a message came through on the North Ronaldsay island WhatsApp from Alex Wright. It consisted of a very blurry photo of an unidentified dove sat on the railings by the lighthouse. It had been taken earlier in the day by Helen Galland and she wanted to know what it was.

Dinner was being prepared, drinks were being served and the photo was inconclusive at best, so it was ultimately dismissed as a dodgy picture of a Collared Dove. Thankfully, though, it was at that moment that Pete Donnelly telephoned the Observatory to discuss a 'funny dove' at the lighthouse.

For the first few minutes of the call, I simply assumed that he was discussing the same photo that we’d all been looking at – but then the penny dropped. He was actually at the lighthouse, watching the bird at that moment! Having been working at the lighthouse, Pete had independently come across the dove and not yet seen the photograph on the island WhatsApp group. Things became a bit more urgent as he described it as "definitely not a Collared Dove" and that it was "too small [for Collared], with wonderful spots on the wings." However, he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

Enough was enough. I ran into the bar and told Alison Duncan, who was cooking dinner, as well as Toby Green and his tour group. We all bolted out the door and raced up to the lighthouse.

When I arrived, the dove was sat on the grass in front of the café, a mere 10 m in front of Pete, who was lounging against his Land Rover. One look was enough – the small size, attenuated shape, orangey-peach body, shiny, iridescent purple neck patches, pale turquoise eye-ring and the big, black oval patches on the wings that Pete had described – it was a Mourning Dove!

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Finders-in-the-field: Mourning Dove, Lerwick, Shetland Dec 2015

Boxing Day, it was fine, cloudy and not very bright, but that didn’t matter since I wasn’t planning on going too far today. In fact another relaxed dinner with the family followed by a get together at a small local hall with friends in the evening was all we intended to do after the excitement of opening presents and eating far too much the previous day. Or so I thought.

It was late morning by the time I decided I’d better get dressed and go and get my partner’s parents, who were joining us for dinner again that day. I was getting dressed in the bedroom, which overlooks the back garden, with its various trees, Pampas Grass, shrubs and a variety of bird feeders that, together, attract a reasonable variety of birds, though seldom anything terribly unusual. At that moment there were a good number of starlings on the ground, on the feeders and hanging round in the perimeter trees, together with a couple of Collared Doves and a Rock Dove. However, my eye was instantly drawn to an altogether different dove to any I’d seen before, it was smaller, darker and less uniform than the Collared Doves I often see. My first thought was that it was the Oriental Turtle Dove from Scalloway – I hadn’t seen that bird but knew of it because of all the excitement it had generated.

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Banded mourning doves provide vital information to biologists

Tuesday, August 19, 2014 

Updated Tuesday, August 19, 2014 9:53 am

Since 2003, the SC Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Section and other partners have taken part in a long-term, multi-state banding project of mourning doves to improve information on dove life history.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY DNR

Over 35 states across the nation are participating in this landmark project, and more than 350,000 doves have been banded nation-wide since the project was initiated. Wildlife biologists use survival rates, harvest rates, recruitment rates and population trends to help guide harvest management decisions. Banding is one of the most important tools used to obtain this information.

For more information on the dove banding project, call the SC Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Small Game Project in Columbia at (803) 734-3609 or visit the Mourning Dove Research and Management page on the DNR website at http://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/dove/.

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INVASIVE SPECIES: Invasive doves colonize Colorado and overshadow "good" doves

By Nancy Lofholm

The Denver Post

POSTED: 02/25/2014 12:01:00 AM MST11 COMMENTS

UPDATED: 02/25/2014 08:23:32 AM MST

GRAND JUNCTION — "Hwwwwwaaaaaaaahhh."

It's an annoying sound, described as a screech, a hiss or a nasally shriek. And it's being heard much more often these days from the backyards of Denver to the pasture lands around Cortez.

It is the sound of an avian interloper, the Eurasian collared dove. This bad bird has found its way northwest from the Bahamas and made itself at home across the United States.

It has invaded Colorado and, besides irritating humans with its noise, it bullies other birds. It has become so pervasive that some birders worry it might eventually muscle out other species like the common mourning dove.

"It is noisy and obnoxious," said William Kaempfer, a vice chancellor and provost at the University of Colorado and one of the state's pre-eminent birders.

The first Eurasian collared dove spotted by ornithologists in Colorado was in Rocky Ford in 1996. In the latest Audubon Christmas Bird Count, there were close to 19,000 in the state. They have now populated all 64 counties in Colorado. Fort Collins, with 3,177 collared doves, showed the highest concentration of the birds in the nation last year.

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