Collared Dove
- The Barbary dove is the domesticated form of the collared dove.
- There are several species of African doves that look very similar to the collared dove, including the ring-necked, red-eyed and African mourning doves.
- Bread forms a significant part of the diet of many suburban doves.
- They like to feed in company: flocks of up to 10,000 have been recorded in Hungary.
- Like most pigeons, collared doves are chiefly vegetarian, finding most of their food from the ground or on bird tables.
- This is one of the nosiest of garden birds, its monotonous cooing driving many people to distraction, while others enjoy hearing it.
- Unlike the closely related wood pigeon, the collared dove isn’t regarded as an agricultural pest, though it can be a nuisance in the garden.
- Such prolific breeding is helped by the eggs hatching after 14 days, and the young fledging just 17 days later.
- The ability to produce multiple broods throughout the year greatly helped the population explosion.
- A pair may produce as many as nine clutches of two eggs in a year, while some have been known to rear five broods in 12 months.
- Territorial battles between rival males are not unusual and are often both fierce and long.
- Nesting throughout the year is quite normal; though breeding activity declines in mid winter.
- Part of the bird’s success is attributable to its preference for living in close proximity to man, preferring farmyards and gardens to the open countryside.
- The North American colonisation has been helped by the release of birds in the Bahamas.
- No one knows for certain what triggered the original expansion of range and increase in population.
- Today collared doves are fast colonising North America and North Africa.
- This bird is the seventh most frequently seen species in British gardens and the population has reached 230,000 pairs.
- Within 20 years they had colonised every county in the British Isles, and had even reached Shetland and the Outer Hebrides.
- There was great excitement among birdwatchers when these doves nested in the UK (in North Norfolk) for the first time in 1956: the nest was heavily guarded and protected from disturbance.
- The collared dove is an eastern European species that was unknown in Britain 60 years ago.
- The spread of this dove across Europe is well documented. They first bred in Hungary in 1932, Austria in 1938, Germany in 1943 and the Netherlands in 1947.
