Eurasian Collared-Doves: They’re Back

I didn’t think they were supposed to migrate, but I’d swear that the pair we had last year went away somewhere for the winter. I’ve posted on these birds before, by the way, in case you’re just tuning in. Look here for my previous posts on them.

Briefly, this species of dove was introduced into the Bahamas in the Bahamas in the seventies, made it to Florida, and has now made it as far as the Dakotas. They’ve been described as “the beige starling of the future.”

Like I said, they weren’t supposed to migrate, but the pair that lived in our area last summer were absent all winter. At least: we didn’t see them and didn’t hear them. We never saw them at our birdfeeders, even though mourning doves were there pretty much constantly.

I wonder if they didn’t have their nest in the old, dead Norway spruce that got cut down last summer. That happened about the same time they started getting scarce, and they had loved perching high in its (dead) branches.

Well anyway, we now have at least one of them in our neighborhood again. In the mornings, we have started to hear the distinctive, repeated huhHOO hoo as well as an occasional scratchy, nasal caaaawww as they swoop in for a landing somewhere.

Here’s a zoomed-in view from one of the pictures Sue snapped of them last summer.




You can tell them from a mourning dove, first, by their larger size and much paler (grayer) plumage, which strikes me as smoother-looking than a mourning dove’s. They have a black collar around the back of their neck. They have red eyes.

Last year, when they were in our yard for, I believe, the first time ever, we observed them pretty much bullying the smaller mourning doves. Both species feed on seed on the ground; the ECDs tended to land outside the feeding zone, then walk right over to the mourning doves who were eating, and they’d basically push them out of the way with their bodies. In response, the dismayed mourning doves tended to move away a few feet. Away from the area with the seeds.

This doesn’t bode well for mourning doves.

The other thing we observed is that the Eurasian collared-doves that we had were darned shy of people. They never stayed in the yard when we were out there. We mainly saw them from the house, or else glimpsed them as they swooped through the trees in our yard.

When they were in the yard while we were outside, too, they almost always positioned themselves on the opposite side of something. A tree, the birdbath, bushes. Outright hiding. Sue had a hard time trying to photograph them.




This is the opposite of what a lot of the references say; others generally describe ECDs as gregarious birds that don’t have much fear of humans. So maybe ours are on the vanguard of ECD “immigration” into our region, and maybe these individuals are more wary than the throngs that seem certain to follow.

Anyway, I don’t have a good idea about how many folks in our state are seeing them. Last summer, Sue and I heard some ECDs hooting at New Haven, Missouri, between the river and the buildings of downtown.

These birds have expanded their territory so quickly, many even slightly old field guides and bird books don’t list them. I guess a lot of people are seeing ECDs and wondering what the heck they are.

This is a case where it pays to keep buying the new editions of bird guides. I encourage you to check the copyright date of your field guide; I have the third edition of the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America, which came out in 1999, and though it includes the ECD, this edition is already out of date. It only shows them getting as far, perhaps, as southeastern Colorado . . .

Eurasian Collared-Dove: Captured

Earlier this month (8/2 and 8/3), Sue managed to capture our pair of Eurasian Collared-Doves with her camera.

Yes, it's a pair.

I've read that they don't migrate, so the couple that we have--we have.

At the top is a photo of one of them on the ground beneath our bird feeders. They always seem to forage on the ground, never from the feeder itself. The photo below shows the pair together in our peach tree. (The "rock peach" tree I've told you about.)



Eurasian Collared-Doves, Streptopelia decaocto, are apparently expanding in range and numbers all across eastern North America. Some are predicting they will be the "beige starling of the future."

Here's my earlier post on them, when the only photographic evidence I had to share were pictures of a tail feather.

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Streptopelia decaocto

This is the first year we’ve noticed a new kind of bird in Central Missouri. We have a pair, and they’ve been hanging around our neighborhood. They feed beneath our bird feeders.

We generally only see one at a time. At first we thought it was just an odd-looking mourning dove, but no: It’s too large, too chunky, and it’s a lot paler. And there’s the distinctive black collar that only goes around the back half of the neck.

The overall effect? It’s as if a mourning dove and a pigeon “got it on,” and their offspring accidentally got dipped in bleach.

The call is an almost owl-like hooting: Hoo HOO, hoo, all more or less on the same pitch. Unlike mourning doves, these don’t twitter their feathers as they take off and land, though they sometimes call a gravelly, nasal, caaaawww as they swoop in to land.

Oh, yeah, and if you get close enough or use binoculars, you’ll see they have reddish irises. Reddish eyes always look positively satanic to me. (Okay, I’ve seen too much TV, haven’t I.)

But maybe the “evil” angle isn’t far off—some have described the ECD as the “beige starling of the future”—it was introduced into the Bahamas in the 1970s and has already spread as far as the Dakotas. Likening anything to a starling sounds incredibly grim.

Within the last century, the ECD has pushed its way all through Western Europe.

We’ve noticed that the two ECDs that frequent our bird feeders peck at and boss away the other birds, particularly the (native) mourning doves. Hmmm. That’s not fun to see.

Do you think in the next decade or so we’ll have big bossy flocks of ECDs swarming our bird feeders the way starlings do? Ugh. But then maybe the ECDs will push away some starlings—and that would be okay, I think . . .

Meanwhile, it is cool to think that, say, the Buddha might have had one of these little guys hooting away in a tree about the time that he attained enlightenment. Or that these doves might have provided the background music when the great Sanskrit classics were composed. Anywhere you go, the cooing of doves can add a note of calm, of peace. Do you think this is the kind of dove the writers of the Bible had in mind when telling the Noah story?

And another thought: At least a few people have posited that the ECD is poised to take advantage of the ecological niche that was formerly occupied by the native American passenger pigeon, exterminated by humans, which became extinct on September 1, 1914. There is something rather poetic about that. But are we ready for thundering, miles-long flocks of Eurasian collared-doves?

Something tells me it won’t come to that. In Missouri at least, ECDs are being treated just like mourning doves for hunting purposes, and I suspect their numbers won’t get out of hand, as long as people love to eat delicious, tender squab . . .

(A photography note—we’ve been trying to get close enough to get a decent picture of these little goobers, but so far no luck. Despite reports of the species’ gregariousness and comfort around humans, the two we have are rather wary of us. So these pictures of one of their feathers, left behind beneath our bird feeders, are the best I can offer for now. I don’t want to copy someone else’s picture without permission. I’m not that kind of girl. Of course, you can find lots of pictures of them on the Internet and in recent editions of North American field guides.)