Collared doves are normally seen in pairs

Latin Name : Streptopelia Decaocto

Resident or visitor : Resident

Size : 31-33cm

Appearance : Milky coffee breast, darker flight feathers, broad band of white on top of tail feathers, marked black and white  ‘collar’ on each side of the neck

Call : Coo-coo-coo : often confused with the woodpigeon, which has two extra coos (coo-coo-coo coo-coo) ! Also lets out a loud ‘kwurr’ when landing or chasing off other collared doves.

Diet : Wheat, barley, oats, seeds, occasionally berries, aphids and caterpillars. In the garden they’ll eat normal mixed bird seed and sunflower hearts

Nesting habitat : Very delicate, made of a layer of thin twigs, in a tree.

Offspring : 2 eggs normally laid – collared doves are generally year-round breeders, but more offspring appear during May. Incubation is by both parents and lasts 14-18 days. After hatching the young are fed ‘crop milk’ (a gloopy conglomerate of regurgitated seeds which the young take from the adult’s crops). Fledglings become independent after about a week.

General information and observations : Collared doves generally pair for life, so you’ll often see them in twos. An incredibly successful bird in the UK, particularly when you consider they only arrived in the 1950s. Very nervous birds, they can become tolerant of humans as long as the humans don’t move too much. Despite being much smaller than magpies, the male collared dove will fluff himself up to look bigger and will happily and activly chase magpies off, particularly if they are near their nests. Collared doves do get predated by sparrowhawks in Snape Wood.

Please add your sightings and observations below !

One Response to “Collared Dove”

1. clayts says:

   March 14, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   Daily sightings