Bird Profile

Mourning Dove

Mourning Doves want seed on a flat surface with a clear view in every direction. Give them that and they become the most dependable birds in the yard, year-round and in numbers.

The Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) is a slender, small-headed dove of roughly 12 inches (30 cm), soft gray-buff above and pinkish-tan below, with black spots on the folded wing and a long, pointed tail edged in white. It is one of the most abundant and widespread birds in North America, and in most yards it is the first bird on the ground in the morning and the last one there in the evening.

Doves are the reason a well-run feeding station needs something at ground level. They cannot work a tube feeder properly, and if the only food you offer is in hanging feeders, doves will spend their day picking through the spillage underneath.

This profile covers identification and the doves it gets confused with, the ground setup that actually suits them, the mechanical whistle everyone asks about, how the crop lets a dove eat fast and digest later, and the crop milk that lets a pair nest almost year-round.

How to identify a Mourning Dove#

The shape is the fastest cue: a small round head on a plump body that tapers into a long, pointed tail. In flight the tail spreads to show white outer corners, and the wings look sharply pointed.

The plumage is subtle rather than dull. Warm gray-brown above, buff to pinkish below, with several crisp black spots scattered across the wing coverts. There is a small black mark on the side of the neck, and in decent light an iridescent pink and green sheen on the neck, brighter on males. The bill is thin and black, and the legs and feet are dull red.

Males average slightly larger and more colorful, with a bluish cast on the crown, but many pairs cannot be sexed at a glance in the yard.

The song is the male's perch coo: a low, drawn-out coo-OO followed by two or three flatter coos. It is regularly reported as an owl.

Doves and pigeons you might confuse it with#

The Eurasian Collared-Dove is the one that matters in most of the country now. It is established across much of the US, is noticeably paler and chunkier, has a black crescent on the back of the neck, and shows a square tail tip rather than a long point.

Where and when you will see them#

Mourning Doves use open and semi-open country of almost every kind: suburbs, farmland, roadsides, grassland with scattered trees, desert washes and city parks. Dense unbroken forest is the one habitat they largely avoid.

They are year-round residents across most of the lower 48. Birds breeding in the northern states and southern Canada move south in fall, so northern yards often see numbers drop sharply in November and build again in March.

At feeders they are creatures of routine, feeding hardest in the first two hours after sunrise and again in late afternoon, then loafing on wires, roof ridges and bare branches in between while the crop empties.

The feeder setup that suits doves#

Feed them low and flat. Doves are heavy-bodied, poor at clinging, and unwilling to balance on short perches.

• A ground tray is the natural fit. A shallow mesh-bottomed tray keeps seed out of wet grass and can be lifted and cleaned, as covered in ground feeders and catch trays.
• A low open platform at 1 to 3 feet (0.3 to 1 m) works just as well and stays cleaner. Options are in platform and tray feeders.
• White proso millet is the single best dove seed and is cheap. See white proso millet for how to use it without attracting the wrong crowd.
• Cracked corn adds bulk at low cost. Storage and spoilage cautions are in cracked corn.
• Sunflower and safflower are taken readily where offered on a flat surface.

Offer grit as well. Doves swallow seed whole and grind it in a muscular gizzard, so coarse sand, crushed eggshell or poultry grit genuinely helps them, particularly in winter when natural grit is under snow. The details are in grit, calcium and eggshells.

The crop: eat now, digest later#

A Mourning Dove does not chew or crack seed. It gulps whole seeds into the crop, a thin-walled storage pouch at the base of the neck, and only later moves them on to be ground up. A feeding bird can pack in a remarkable quantity in a few minutes, and you can sometimes see the bulge in its neck as it flies off.

That is why doves arrive in a rush, feed hard for ten minutes and then disappear to sit on a wire. It is also why they are so vulnerable while feeding: an animal filling its crop on open ground is not watching the sky as carefully as it should.

Doves also drink differently from most birds. Instead of scooping and tipping the head back, they suck water up with the bill submerged, which makes a shallow basin with a gentle slope worth having. Basin depth and edge design are covered in bird baths.

Nesting and crop milk#

The nest is a famously slapdash platform of twigs, often thin enough to see the eggs through from below, placed on a horizontal branch, a ledge, a gutter, a hanging basket or occasionally on bare ground. The clutch is almost always two white eggs, incubated by both parents for about two weeks.

The unusual part is the food. Both parents produce crop milk, a protein-rich and fat-rich secretion sloughed from the crop lining, and the squabs feed on it for the first days of life before graduating to regurgitated seed. Because that food supply is made by the adults rather than caught, doves are not tied to a peak of insect abundance the way most songbirds are.

The consequence is a long season. In the northern states pairs raise two or three broods; in the South nesting can run from late winter into fall with five or six attempts, and a pair may start the next clutch while the previous young are still being fed. Feeding through those months is covered in feeding during nesting season.

Hawks, cats and the price of feeding in the open#

Doves are a preferred prey of Cooper's Hawks and Sharp-shinned Hawks, and a feeding station that concentrates them will eventually draw one. This is normal, not a failure of your setup, and the practical responses are set out in hawks hunting at your feeder.

Cats are the more serious problem, because a bird feeding on the ground in the open is exactly what a stalking cat is built for. Keep ground trays well away from low dense cover a cat can hide in, and read cats and bird feeders before you place one.

Population and hunting#

Mourning Doves are among the most numerous birds on the continent, with a population running into the hundreds of millions, and they are also the most widely hunted game bird in North America. Both statements are true at once: the species is prolific enough to sustain a regulated harvest, and populations have remained broadly stable.

They have benefited from the way people alter land. Clearing, farming, roadsides and suburbs all create the open ground with scattered perches that doves prefer.

A dove-friendly setup#

• One ground tray or low platform in the open, at least 15 feet (4.5 m) from dense cover.
• White proso millet and cracked corn as the base, with sunflower or safflower if you want variety.
• Only as much seed as clears in a day, swept up in the evening.
• Grit or crushed eggshell offered separately, especially in winter.
• A shallow water source with a gentle slope and a rough surface underfoot.
• Keep the ground area away from cat cover, and expect the occasional hawk. More specific tactics are in how to attract Mourning Doves, which also covers keeping doves from monopolizing the rest of your feeders.