Educate Yourself About the Mourning Dove and Other Doves
Mourning Dove
The Morning Dove has a pale bluish orbital ring (around the eyes), gray-brown overall, buff belly, black spots on back, is smaller and slimmer than the Rock Dove, wings are uniform brown above, gray underwing, and a long pointed tail with large white spots.
Its length is 12in (30cm) Its wingspan is 18in (46cm) Its voice is a hollow, mournful “coah, cooo, cooo, cooo” Their eggs are unmarked white, with often tree or more clutches, consisting of 1-3 eggs. Both male and female incubate with day/night shifts, for about 13-14 days, and fledging time is around 12-14 days. Both male and female feed their young. Male and female look alike.
Doves do live up to their reputation as the symbol of “love”, because they will mate for a lifetime. The male is also very persistent in his pursuit of his lady love, during the start of mating season. If one of the partners dies, they will rather quickly find a new mate though.
The Morning Dove is the only North American dove that can be found in every state across the country, they also raise the most broods, over six yearly, and they are also the living reminder of the now-extinct Passenger Pigeon witch disappeared in the late 18th century.
You will not see a lone dove very often, because they like to hang in pairs or small groups, around feeding stations in your lovely bird feeding garden, but you will see flocks from 50 up to several hundred birds visiting open agricultural land across the US. Doves are mostly seed eaters, and research has found that a stomach of a dove can hold an amazing 7.500 yellow wood sorrel seeds, or 17.200 grass seeds that researchers detected in another doves belly. They also consume large amounts of insects, unlike other mainly seed eating birds.
Mourning Doves like to nest early in the season, sometimes as early as December, while snow can still be found on the ground; witch is long before most other species. Their nests are usually not built as fine as most other birds, they have a flimsy, crude-looking, shallow platform of sticks and twigs so thin, you can see the white eggs right through the bottom of it. The conifers that they usually build their nests in, about 5-25ft (1.5-7.5m) above ground will give shelter and protection though. Sometimes you can find nests built on window sills and roof gutters as well.
If you like to attract doves like the Mourning Doves, and the Rock Doves, plant elderberry and pokeberry, and fill your bird feeding tables with millet seeds, corn, and bread crumbs. In your lovely bird feeding garden they also like to feed on grass, clover seeds, along with weeds, such as rag-weed, wood sorrel, and lamb’s-quarters. Always provide fresh water and clean birdbaths, also provide nesting cones in forked branches of conifer, and cut cones from a 12in (30cm) square of fine-meshed hardware cloth.
