BIRDwatch

Mourning DovE

By Cecily Nabors

If you walk into a somewhat-secluded natural area and are startled by a flock of birds bursting up from almost under your feet, you probably just met some Mourning Doves. These brownish-gray birds, Zenaida macroura, may seem boring when more brightly colored birds are visible, but look again. Small, elegant heads; slender bodies; long, tapered tails that flare to white-edged fans; and pink feet! Look even closer for the iridescence on their necks and the turquoise ring around those big eyes. What should you listen for? First, the bird’s common name does not imply that there’s also an Afternoon Dove. It comes from their mournful call: ooh-aaahh, cooo, coo, coo. People often think they’re hearing a daylight owl. Another dove sound is easy to mistake. When a Mourning Dove does a rapid takeoff, it makes a distinctive whistling whirr not by its voice but with its wings. These “common” birds are really quite special! Mourning Doves like open habitats, so farms, fields, open woods, and suburban areas suit their needs. They are ground-foragers and frequent visitors to our yards and gardens. Doves are with us all year, but the birds we see in summer may not be the same ones we saw in winter. They tend to hang out in flocks after breeding season. In terms of nest-building, Mourning Doves are almost infinitely adaptable. They’ll build nests in trees, shrubs, vines, or even on the ground. They always lay two eggs at a time, and may have several broods in a season, raising their twins in flimsy nests that look like they’ll fall apart (and occasionally do). Mourning Doves sometimes use elements of human habitation as nest supports. Our editor says they nest (inconveniently) above her back door. Once, a dove nested on the basketball hoop mounted on a friend’s carport. The female brooded her eggs imperturbably above the racket of a carport attached to a house with four teenagers. (Yes, the kids did stop shooting hoops for the weeks of brooding and feeding youngsters.) Like other birds in the pigeon family, both male and female Mourning Doves feed their young with a regurgitated white fluid called “pigeon milk” or “crop milk.” It’s made from cells that line the parent birds’ crops and is rich in protein and fat. Older youngsters are also fed seeds and insects. Seeds are the bulk of a dove’s diet. The birds will readily come to bird feeders, especially platform feeders or seed scattered on the ground. Favorite feeder foods are white millet, cracked corn, hulled sunflower seeds, and safflower seeds. Besides providing feeders and seedproducing plants, you can draw doves to your yard with a birdbath, especially in hot weather. They need water to drink and also for cooling. A birdbath’s shallow water heats up quickly, and the water can get grungy pretty fast. Do change the water every day and add ice to it occasionally; birds are fine with the ice and it slows down algae growth. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Mourning Doves are the continent’s most popular game bird: hunters may shoot more than 20 million each year. If hunters shoot that many, how is it that Mourning Doves didn’t follow the Passenger Pigeon to extinction? The answer is complex, but one component is doves’ prolific rate of breeding: they start in February and may still be making nests into October. Another aspect is that while hunting is allowed by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, populations are now monitored and hunting is controlled by licenses and permits. For example, Maryland and Virginia maintain dove management areas and designate several weeks in the autumn and winter for dove hunting in those areas only. No hunting is allowed in the District of Columbia.

It’s nice to know that the world is safer for Mourning Doves. Although their song sounds like a soft lament, the birds are thriving. o

Cecily Nabors is a retired software manager who has been watching and counting birds for much of her life. She publishes the GoodNatured Observations blog at cecilynabors.com.