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Bird Species: D
Ground Dove
Where They Live: Everyone who lives across the southernmost edge of the North American continent is able to enjoy the small, slender common ground dove. It can be found from southern California into Mexico, across the Gulf coast to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Common ground doves also live on many Caribbean islands. Like their larger mourning dove cousins, they prefer open areas such as beaches, agricultural fields and roadsides. And like their larger cousins, they build flimsy, simple nests. However, the common ground dove builds its nest right on the ground, sometimes no more than a depression in the sandy soil. They are known to nest at any time from February through October, raising as many as three or four broods in a single year.
What They Eat: Common ground doves consume cereal grains, weed and grass seeds, wild berries and some insects. They forage for their food on the ground, walking briskly between morsels and bobbing their heads as they move. They will visit backyard feeders where they prefer millet seed, cracked corn and oil sunflower seed scattered directly on the ground or offered on a low platform feeder. In backyards, common ground doves sometimes become so tame that they don't fly until someone almost steps on them.
Appearance: Common ground doves are the smallest dove species in North America, a dainty 6 to 7 inches long, which makes them appear a miniature version of other doves. Males have a gray crown and pinkish wash on their cheeks, throat and underside. Females are similar, but with pale brownish gray forehead and under parts. Both sexes generally are gray-brown with scalloped head and breast feathers, giving them a scaly look. Common ground doves are stocky as compared to the sleek mourning doves and have short, square, dark tails. Their bill is red with a black tip. In flight, these doves show bright chestnut-colored primary feathers in their wings.
Voice: The soft, repetitious "coo-ah, coo-ah" of the common ground dove marks it as a member of the "cooing" dove family. A male may settle on a tree branch and coo for hours with only an occasional break.
Mourning Dove
Where They Live: The most widespread North American dove species is the mourning dove, which nests in all of the 48 contiguous states, the southern half of the Canadian provinces and Mexico. The only surroundings that mourning doves avoid are areas with dense forest, preferring open habitat with scattered trees and shrubs. They are year 'round inhabitants in all but the very northern edge of their range. Skilled homebuilders mourning doves are not. They build thin, flimsy nests in tree branches, often little more than a loose stick platform. Eggs sometimes can be seen by simply looking up through the mourning dove's nest.
What They Eat: Unlike seed eating birds with conical beaks, mourning dove bills are not designed for cracking the shells of large seeds. So they prefer eating seeds with softer shells like those of weeds and grasses. We owe mourning doves our gratitude for the vast numbers of weed seeds they consume around our towns and suburban homes. When doves encounter harder seeds, they swallow the whole thing and crush the shell in their gizzards. Dove youngsters, called squab, feed on "crop milk" for their first two weeks of life. The "milk" is actually liquefied ground seeds mixed with sloughed off crop lining. Mourning doves regularly visit backyard bird feeders, usually foraging on the ground. The best way to attract them is to offer cereal grains such as cracked corn and millet seed on a platform feeder placed low to the ground.
Appearance: Mourning doves are large (12 inches), stocky, long-tailed, gray-brown birds with small heads. In flight, the tapering silhouette of their tail will show white feather tips. Doves are swift and determined fliers. At rest, the upper wings are covered with black spots. Look for a black eye surrounded by a bright blue eye ring, black bill and red legs and feet. Males show a pink iridescence on the sides of their necks during breeding season. Mourning doves are hunted as game birds in a number of states. Even so, the population remains strong and stable.
Voice: Mourning doves are not morning doves even though they tend to sing just before dawn. Instead they are "m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g" doves because their song is said to sound plaintive and sorrowful. The song is a low-pitched, hollow series of whistles. The first two phrases inflect upward and the last three are on one even pitch: "Hooo-aah, whoo, whoo, whoo." Another unique sound by the mourning dove is "wing whir," made as the bird takes flight. It is a fluttered whistle or twittering sound made by air passing over the wing feathers. When a dove is startled into flight, wing whir signals alarm to other doves.