Eurasian collared dove

Name and taxonomy

The Hungarian naturalist Imre Frivaldszky described the bird in 1838. He treated it as a wild form of the tame barbary dove. The type locality is Plovdiv, in Bulgaria. Charles Lucien Bonaparte set up the genus Streptopelia in 1855. Streptos is Ancient Greek for collar, and peleia means dove. The second half of the name, decaocto, is the Greek word for eighteen.

The Burmese collared dove was treated as a subspecies until 2021. The IOC then split it off as a species of its own. Two further named subspecies from Turkestan and southern India are no longer accepted. Wikidata records the English names collared dove and Turkish dove. Genetic work shows the barbary dove came from the African collared dove, not from this one. The 2021 decision left the Eurasian bird with no accepted subspecies.

Evolution and relatives

The Eurasian collared dove forms a superspecies with two close relatives. One is the Sunda collared dove of southeast Asia. The other is the African collared dove, south of the Sahara. A silent African collared dove is hard to separate from this bird. That species is a shade smaller and paler. The two calls settle the question, because the African bird purrs rather than coos. As with many doves, the three species differ more in voice than in plumage.

The barbary dove is the domestic form of the African species. Linnaeus named it Columba risoria in 1758, from a Latin word for laughing. It may have reached Italy from North Africa in the late 16th century. The white strain of that dove is the bird used in stage magic. Barbary doves can breed with either wild species, which leaves their rank unsettled.

Appearance

The body is grey-buff to pinkish-grey, and paler below than above. A blue-grey patch shows on the underwing. The black half-collar on the nape is edged with white. The tail is grey-buff on top, and dark grey with white tips underneath. The legs are short and red, and the bill is black.

The iris is red, and the pupil is large. At any distance the eye looks entirely black. A small patch of bare skin, white or yellow, rings the eye. Male and female look the same. A young bird has a weak collar and a brown iris. An adult measures about 32 cm long and spans 47 to 55 cm. Wikidata gives an adult mass of 193 grams, near the middle of the range.

Habitat and range

The dove nests close to houses wherever food is easy and trees stand nearby. Almost every nest lies within 1 km of an inhabited building. Farms with spilt grain hold the largest numbers. Suburbs and mixed farmland suit the bird best. It does not migrate, but young birds move a long way from where they hatched.

At the end of the 19th century the range reached from eastern Turkey to southern China. It also ran south through India to Sri Lanka. A record from Bulgaria came in 1838, and the Balkans followed between 1900 and 1920. The bird arrived in Germany in 1945, in Denmark in 1948 and in Britain on 14 May 1952. The first British nest followed in 1956. Ireland followed in 1959, and the Faroes in the early 1970s.

By the end of the 20th century the dove had passed the Arctic Circle in Norway. In the east it reached the Ural Mountains. In the southwest it took the Canary Islands and North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt. It also spread through central and northern China, and turned up in Japan. Iceland gets only strays, with 41 records up to 2006. The Japanese birds were most likely brought there by people.

Diet and feeding

Grain is the main food of the collared dove. Seeds, green shoots and insects fill out the diet. The bird feeds around grain stores and wherever livestock get fed. Garden bird tables draw it in as well. As with other pigeons, it walks over the ground and picks food up as it goes.

The species is sociable, and winter flocks build up around a steady food supply. A flock usually holds 10 to 50 birds. Gatherings of up to 10000 have been counted. In North America the diet overlaps with that of the mourning dove. Work in Florida found no sign that the newcomer bullies the native bird. Grain spilt at a store probably holds a flock through a whole winter.

Behaviour and social life

The collared dove lives beside people and appears to take little notice of them. Ordinary flight is direct, on fast and clipped wing beats. The bird rarely glides while it travels. The display flight of the male is the exception. He climbs almost vertically, then glides down in a wide circle.

During that glide he holds the wings below the body in a shallow V. Pairs stay together and share the work of raising the young. Birds feed together at a rich site, so they probably defend little beyond the nest. Numbers in a long-settled area level off and then start to fall. In newly reached country the population still climbs.

Communication and senses

The song is a three-syllable goo-GOO-goo, with the stress in the middle. That rhythm gave the bird its scientific name. In several Balkan languages the word for eighteen also has three syllables. The dove adds a harsh screech that lasts about two seconds. It uses that call in flight, just before it lands. Both sounds probably carry the same rhythm from one country to the next.

In early spring, people sometimes take the cooing for an early cuckoo. The song carries well across gardens and farmyards, which probably suits a bird of open country. Sight and hearing likely matter most, as in other pigeons. The white-edged collar may work as a signal between birds.

Reproduction and life cycle

The pair build a nest of sticks in a tree. The female lays two white eggs. She sits on them at night, and the male sits by day. Incubation lasts 14 to 18 days. The young fly at 15 to 19 days old. A chick weighs about 9.2 grams when it hatches.

Three or four broods a year are normal. Six broods in one year have been recorded. A pair that loses a clutch may start again within weeks. Breeding runs right through the year where food holds out. In cold regions such as northeastern Europe the birds seldom nest in winter. The species is monogamous, and both parents feed the squabs.

The oldest wild bird on record reached 17.8 years. A captive bird lived to 17.9 years. Most birds probably die long before that age. A short incubation and many broods probably make up for those losses.

Predators and threats

Birds of prey take adults, and cats probably catch some near houses. A stick nest in a garden tree is likely open to crows and squirrels. Disease is the clearer threat to this species. The dove carries the parasite Trichomonas gallinae. It also carries pigeon paramyxovirus type 1.

Both can pass to native birds where they mix at a feeder. A hawk that eats an infected dove can pick the parasite up as well. The parasite causes canker in pigeons and frounce in birds of prey. It broke out in British finches in 2005 and hit greenfinches hardest. Pigeon paramyxovirus type 1 could reach poultry, which makes the dove an economic worry.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the Eurasian collared dove as Least Concern. iNaturalist holds 174309 observations of the species. GBIF records it from 152 countries and territories. British numbers fell after 2005, and finch trichomonosis is the likely cause. By 2026 the British population was down by 40 percent.

Finland lists the bird as Endangered inside its own borders. Norway lists it as Near Threatened. NatureServe treats the Canadian birds as an introduced population with no rank. Growth in Florida has stopped, and recent counts there point downward. Across newer parts of the American range, numbers rose by more than 1.5 percent a year up to 2015. Warm places with middling levels of building hold the most birds. Austria records the species as not endangered. Portugal, Israel and parts of France also place it at Least Concern.

Relationship with humans

This dove takes most of its food from people, directly or by accident. Grain stores, stockyards and bird tables all feed it. It reached North America by escape rather than by plan. Fewer than 50 birds got out of captivity in Nassau, in the Bahamas, in 1974. Their descendants crossed Arkansas at about 100 km a year.

That was more than twice the European rate of 45 km a year. It covered about 500 km of that state between 1989 and 1997. Some people fear the dove will crowd out native species. The evidence gathered by 2012 did not support that fear. The risk of disease to poultry is probably the stronger case against the bird. The collared dove is probably among the most familiar garden birds in Europe. Few people in Britain saw one before the 1950s, and most probably see one now.

In culture and myth

The name decaocto comes from a Greek story. A maid worked hard for 18 silver coins a year and thought the wage unfair. She asked the gods to make her treatment known. Zeus answered, and the maid became a dove that calls out her wage. Most of the European range lay inside the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. So the bird is the Turkish dove in Danish, German and French.

Doves in general carry heavy symbolism across the old world. In Mesopotamia the dove belonged to Inanna-Ishtar, the goddess of love and war. Greek writers passed the bird on to Aphrodite. In the Hebrew Bible a dove brings Noah an olive leaf. Christians read the dove as the Holy Spirit at the baptism of Jesus.

In Islamic tradition, pigeons built a nest at a cave mouth and screened the Prophet Muhammad on his flight. Early Christian tombs show a dove holding an olive branch. That pairing became the modern symbol of peace. Picasso drew a dove called La Colombe. It became the emblem of the World Peace Council in 1949. White doves released at weddings are usually homing pigeons, because tame doves cannot find their way back. The wild collared dove probably inherits all of that goodwill without earning any of it.