dove | Morning Bray Farm

We have a dove nesting above one of the light fixtures in the barn. Not surprising due to the fact that we have a plethora of doves here.

One of the things I’ve come to love about blogging is that I learn so much – not only because I’m always looking things up to be accurate in my posts, but also because I’m constantly learning new things from all of you.

I found the screeching calls of the doves in Albuquerque very strange until I took the time (only yesterday!) to identify our barn dove. She’s not a Mourning Dove. She’s a Eurasian Collared-Dove and has a very different voice than a Mourning Dove.

Some interesting facts about Eurasian Collared-Doves from whatbird.com:

The Eurasian Collared-Dove is one of two species that have been argued to be the wild ancestor of the domestic Barbary Dove.
Their scientific name, Streptopeleia decaocto, literally means a collar (streptos) dove (peleia). In Greek mythology, Decaocto was an overworked, underpaid servant girl. The gods heard her prayers for help and changed her into a dove so she could escape her misery. The dove’s call still echoes the mournful cries of her former life.
Introduced into the Bahamas in the 1970s, some migrated to Florida in the 1980s. They went unnoticed at first because they look much like the Ringed Turtle-Dove. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that ornithologists realized the suddenly prolific and quickly spreading “turtle-doves” they were watching were actually Eurasian Collared-Doves. Their impact on native species is unknown; some have suggested that their spread represents exploitation of a niche made available by the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon.
A group of doves has many collective nouns, including a “bevy”, “cote”, “dole”, “dule”, and “flight” of doves.