Eurasian collared-dove

Voice

A monotonous three-part coo-COOO-cuk, stress on the drawn-out middle syllable, repeated five to ten times from a roof, aerial or bare branch. Heard mainly from February to September and chiefly by day, though town birds under street lighting sometimes call well into the night. On landing it gives a nasal, hoarse hraaih.

Identification

Pale sandy grey-brown, with a narrow white-edged black half-collar on the side of the neck in adults. The tail is long and sharply patterned below: black base, broad white tip. In flight the dark primaries and white tail corners show well; the eye is red-brown, the legs pink. Juveniles lack the collar.

Confusion species

Turtle Dove is the real pitfall: it has rufous scaled upperparts, a black-and-white striped neck patch and a much darker, smaller outline. The tail from below settles it. Collared Dove shows black with a broad white terminal band across the whole width, Turtle Dove a narrow white rim around a dark tail.

Habitat

Tied closely to people: village centres, suburbs with conifers, farmyards, petting zoos, grain silos and harbours. Nests on a flimsy twig platform in a conifer, in ivy or under an eave, usually close to a reliable food source. Outside the breeding season small parties gather at spilt grain around stables and poultry units.

Range and movements

From the Balkans the species expanded explosively during the twentieth century; the Netherlands were reached in 1947 and occupied within twenty years. It now breeds north to Scandinavia and Iceland. In Spain colonisation came later, from the 1980s, and it now nests in virtually every town and village on the peninsula.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Any month will do, but March and April bring the most calling; work a village edge or a cemetery with conifers early in the morning. Watch for the display flight: a steep clattering climb followed by a glide down in an arc on a spread tail. Winter flocks gather around grain stores.

Conservation status

After the spectacular advance, numbers in north-west Europe have levelled off and in the Netherlands have slowly declined over recent decades. Tidier farmyards, less spilt grain, the loss of small-scale poultry keeping and predation by Goshawk and cats all play a part. Globally the species is abundant and still spreading.