Tuesday, October 27, 2009

White Winged Dove

When I went out to get my mail the other day I heard a familiar bird call. It sounded like a dove, but since there have only been mockingbirds in those trees for quite some time I figured it was the mockingbirds again.
But, no, a quick scan of the tree line showed an odd looking dove. It was brownish-grey which made me realize it wasn't a mourning dove. As those are the only doves I knew about I was excited to learn something so new. I also relearned that pigeons and doves are in the same family columbidae and the terms can be interchangable in some cases.
The dove was in fact a White Winged Dove; so named for its distintive white stripe along the bottom edge of the wing when at rest and the middle of the top when in flight. Otherwise it looks like a pretty typical dove: long skinny neck, small head, chubby body, little dark stripe below the eyes. They have a dark brownish-grey body and a little blue around the eyes. They're large for doves, adults can be up to a foot long.
The white winged dove has a fairly southern range, so Texas is about as far north as they go.

Cool fact: Dodos were related to pigeons, so that means that two of the most famous animals to go extinct were pigeons.

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