Mourning Dove

Adults have light grey-brown upperparts and pale pinkish-fawn underparts. The wings have black spots, and the long, tapered tail has white edges. There is a distinctive dark patch below and behind the eye. Juveniles (like the fledgling nestled near the ground in this image) are duller, scaly in appearance, and lack the iridescent neck patches of adults.

Long tapered tail with white tips, black spots on the wings, dark spot behind the eye, and slender silhouette in flight.

Length: 22-34 cm (8.7-13.4 in), Wingspan: 37-45 cm (14.6-17.7 in), Weight: 85-170 g (3.0-6.0 oz)

A haunting, sorrowful cooing call that sounds like 'oo-ah, oo, oo, oo', often mistaken by novices for an owl hoot.

Almost exclusively seeds (99%), including cultivated grains, weed seeds, and occasionally snails. They swallow seeds whole and store them in a muscular crop.

Open and semi-open country, including agricultural lands, prairies, urban areas, open woodlands, and scrublands.

Partial migrant. Northern populations migrate southward for the winter, while southern populations are year-round residents.

Builds a flimsy, flat platform nest made of twigs, usually in trees, shrubs, or sometimes directly on the ground (as seen with this ground fledgling stage). Clutch size is almost always 2 white eggs. Both parents incubate and feed the young 'pigeon's milk'.

Eurasian Collared-Dove (larger, square tail with black neck collar) and Passenger Pigeon (extinct, longer tail, reddish underparts).

Mourning doves play an important ecological role as seed dispersers and form a major prey base for various raptors and carnivorous mammals.

Least Concern, with a very large and stable global population trend.

Look for them walking on the ground in open fields, lawns, and gravelly areas searching for seeds. They are frequent visitors to backyard bird feeders.

Mourning doves are one of the most widely distributed and abundant game birds in North America. They are capable of drinking water by sucking it up without tilting their heads back, unlike most other birds.