These doves (up to 12) have been hanging around our backyard for three years. I thought that they were local wild doves until I just tired looking to find out the species. So far it is the only dove I have seen up here. It seems like the Rock Dove and Mourning Dove are the only wild doves in the Pacific Northwest. Are these wild domesticates? Photo taken south of Olympia, Washington.
Posted by Rob Graham on September 25, 2011 at 10:56 PM
Have you considered Eurasian Collared-Dove? They are becoming very common here in Kansas. I don't know how to separate Ringneck from Eurasian Collared-Dove, except by size. Eurasian Collared-Doves are quite large. One guidebook I looked in says that escaped Ringneck Doves don't do well in the wild. http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird/eurasian_collared-dove talks about the ECDO invasion in Washington State.
Thanks Rob. After reading your link I'm sure that you hit it right on. I guess I'm never too old to learn.
Posted by Dennis Plank on September 26, 2011 at 9:37 AM
Jeff: I live south of Olympia and we do get occasional Eurasian Collared Doves. Not a huge number at our place yet compared with the Rock Doves. This certainly looks like one.
Posted by David Graham on September 26, 2011 at 11:04 AM
The domesticated Streptopelia 'rizoria' ( ring-necked dove ,laughing dove, collared dove, ringed turtle dove) has been cage-bred for more than two millennia. They are claimed to have been derived from and, if feral, to be able to interbreed with at least two wild species of collared doves ( S. decaocto, the eurasian collared dove, and S. rosogrisea, the African collared dove)
Escaped or intentionally released collared doves have established self-sustaining feral populations in North America since at least as early as the late 1960s , if not earlier. They tolerate the coldest of mid-latitude winters. I maintained a captive breeding population of S. rizoria in an outdoor aviary in central Iowa during the 1970s when winter lows routinely dropped into the minus 20s Fahrenheit and occasionally the minus 30s. Well-fed and always provided with nest boxes, protection from wind, and unfrozen water, they thrived.
As a result of the multiplicity of phenotypic color mutations that have occurred in S. rizoria combined with the various degrees of interbreeding of wild types and color mutants with the exotics (S. decoctea and S. rosogrisea) I've given up on attempts at definitive I.D. of the various "collared doves" observed in the wild state in North Amrica.
The problem is not unlike observing a collection of "mongrel" dogs and presuming to authoratatiely declare the "pure" breeds in the parentage of each.
Discussion
4 repliesEscaped or intentionally released collared doves have established self-sustaining feral populations in North America since at least as early as the late 1960s , if not earlier. They tolerate the coldest of mid-latitude winters. I maintained a captive breeding population of S. rizoria in an outdoor aviary in central Iowa during the 1970s when winter lows routinely dropped into the minus 20s Fahrenheit and occasionally the minus 30s. Well-fed and always provided with nest boxes, protection from wind, and unfrozen water, they thrived.
As a result of the multiplicity of phenotypic color mutations that have occurred in S. rizoria combined with the various degrees of interbreeding of wild types and color mutants with the exotics (S. decoctea and S. rosogrisea) I've given up on attempts at definitive I.D. of the various "collared doves" observed in the wild state in North Amrica.
The problem is not unlike observing a collection of "mongrel" dogs and presuming to authoratatiely declare the "pure" breeds in the parentage of each.
Dave Graham, East River, SD