Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura): Facts, Calls and Habitat

Appearance: how to identify a mourning dove

A mourning dove looks graceful and streamlined, with a small, round head, a plump body and a long, tapering tail that ends in a point. In flight the tail shows broad white tips on the outer feathers.

• Upperparts: soft gray-brown to buff, with scattered black spots on the wings
• Underparts: pale buff to pinkish tan
• Face: a small black spot or crescent below and behind the eye, and a ring of pale blue bare skin around the dark eye
• Bill and legs: short, dark bill; short reddish-pink legs

Males and females are similar, but adult males usually have a bluish-gray crown, a rosier breast and a purple-pink iridescent patch on the side of the neck. Females are slightly smaller and browner. Juveniles look scaly because of pale edges to their feathers.

The most similar bird in North America is the larger, paler Eurasian collared dove, an introduced species with a black half-collar and a square tail. The common city pigeon is bulkier, with a short, fan-shaped tail; see dove vs pigeon for the full comparison.

Size

Mourning doves are medium-sized doves, noticeably slimmer and lighter than a city pigeon.

The long tail accounts for much of the length, which is why a mourning dove looks bigger in the air than in the hand. The species name macroura means “long-tailed”.

Calls and sounds

The male’s song is a low, slow “cooOOoo-woo-woo-woo”: a rising and falling first note followed by two or three softer, lower coos. It carries a long way and is often mistaken for an owl, especially when heard at dawn. Males sing to advertise for a mate and to defend a nest site, and paired males give a shorter “nest call” to draw their mate to a nest site.

The wings produce a distinctive, high twittering whistle on take-off and landing. This mechanical sound comes from the flight feathers, not the voice. For a full guide to its calls and how to tell them from owls, see what does a mourning dove sound like?

Habitat and range

Mourning doves live almost anywhere with open ground for feeding and trees or shrubs for nesting. They are common on farmland, prairies, woodland edges, deserts, suburbs, parks and backyards, and avoid only dense forest and large swamps.

Their range covers a huge area of nearly 11 million km² (4.2 million sq mi): from southern Canada across the entire contiguous United States and Mexico to Central America, Bermuda and the Greater Antilles. They were introduced to Hawaii in the 1960s.

Many northern birds migrate. Doves breeding in Canada and the northern United States move south in fall, from September to November, and return in spring. In the southern United States and Mexico they are present all year. Mourning doves are rare vagrants to Europe, with a handful of records from Britain and Ireland, Iceland, Sweden and the Azores.

Diet: what do mourning doves eat?

Mourning doves are almost entirely seed-eaters. Seeds make up more than 99 percent of their diet, mostly from grasses, weeds and crops such as corn, wheat, millet, sunflower, sesame and rapeseed, plus pine seeds and the seeds of sweetgum and pokeweed. Insects and snails are eaten only rarely.

They feed on the ground, walking with short steps and picking up seeds that are easy to see rather than scratching for them. A dove can quickly fill its crop, a stretchy pouch in the throat, with hundreds or even thousands of seeds, then fly to a safe perch to digest them. They also swallow grit, which helps grind seeds in the gizzard.

Like other pigeons and doves, mourning doves can drink by sucking water up in one long draw, without tipping the head back to swallow. This lets them drink quickly at waterholes, an advantage in deserts where they may fly several kilometers to water each day.

Behavior and flight

Mourning doves are fast, direct fliers, capable of speeds up to about 88 km/h (55 mph). Their flight is swift and slightly erratic, with quick wingbeats, which helps them escape falcons and hawks.

Outside the breeding season they gather in flocks to feed and roost, sometimes in the hundreds where food is plentiful. They often sunbathe by lying on the ground or a flat branch, leaning over and raising one wing for many minutes, and they also bathe in water and dust.

Reproduction: nests, eggs and crop milk

Mourning doves are among the most prolific breeders of any North American bird. In the south they may nest in almost every month, and a pair can raise up to five or six broods a year in warm regions; two or three is more typical in the north.

Courtship: the male makes a noisy flapping flight, then a long circular glide with spread wings, and then bows, puffs out his chest and coos to the female.

Nest: the male brings twigs, pine needles and grass stems, often standing on the female’s back to pass them to her, and she builds them into a nest. It is famously flimsy, a loose platform so thin that the eggs can sometimes be seen from below. Nests are usually in trees or shrubs, but also on gutters, porch ledges, hanging planters and occasionally on the ground.

Eggs and chicks:

• Clutch: almost always two white eggs
• Incubation: about 14 days, shared by both parents; the male usually sits from morning to afternoon and the female for the rest of the day and night
• Squabs: the chicks hatch helpless and are fed on crop milk, a nutritious secretion produced in the lining of both parents’ crops, for their first few days, then on a mix of crop milk and softened seeds
• Fledging: at about 11–15 days, after which the father keeps feeding them for up to two weeks

Crop milk is a feature of the whole pigeon and dove family; read more in what is crop milk?

Lifespan

Most mourning doves live short lives. Adult survival is low, and the average lifespan of a wild adult is only about 1 to 1.5 years. Predators, disease, harsh winters and hunting all contribute, and fast breeding is what keeps numbers high. A few individuals live much longer: the oldest banded wild mourning dove on record was more than 30 years old.

Predators and threats

The main predators of adult mourning doves are birds of prey such as falcons, Cooper’s hawks and sharp-shinned hawks. Eggs and squabs are taken by crows, jays, grackles, rat snakes and domestic cats. Disease, especially the parasite Trichomonas gallinae (which also affects other doves and pigeons), and avian pox cause local losses.

The mourning dove is also the most widely hunted game bird in North America, with millions taken each year under regulated seasons. Wildlife agencies monitor numbers closely and set harvest limits accordingly. Other pressures include lead poisoning from spent shot and the loss of open, weedy farmland habitat.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classes the mourning dove as Least Concern. With a total population well over 100 million birds and a vast range, it is one of the most numerous birds in North America. Surveys show long-term declines in some areas, particularly in the West, so the species is monitored, but it remains very common.

Myths and facts

Myth: the mourning dove’s call is an owl. Many people hear the soft coos at dawn and assume an owl is calling. Owls are mostly silent by full daylight, while mourning doves call from sunrise through the day, especially in spring and summer.

Myth: doves are not very good parents because their nests are so flimsy. The nest is basic, but the parents are devoted. One adult is almost always on the eggs or chicks, and both feed the young with crop milk.

Fact: the wings really whistle. The sharp, twittering sound when a dove bursts into flight is made by its feathers, not its voice, and it may alert other doves to danger.

Mourning doves and people

Mourning doves have benefited from human changes to the land. Clearing forests for farms, planting crops, and adding gardens, bird feeders and shade trees in towns have all created ideal habitat. Today they are among the most frequent visitors to backyard bird feeders across the United States, where they feed on spilled seed beneath the feeder.

Wisconsin named the mourning dove its official symbol of peace in 1971. The species is a relative of the extinct passenger pigeon, which once flew over eastern North America in flocks of billions; the two look similar, but genetic studies show they are not each other’s closest relatives. The mourning dove’s closest living relatives are the eared dove of South America and the Socorro dove of Mexico, and it shares its family, the Columbidae, with more than 300 other species, including the familiar city rock pigeon.