Doves and pigeons | Columbidae

Duiven | Palomas | Doves and pigeons

Fifty-one species in thirteen genera occur in this guide, and the family here runs from small ground doves with dark or metallic spots on the wing, such as the puna ground doves (Metriopelia) and the long-tailed species of dry coastal desert and savanna, to shy quail-doves walking the floor of the cloud forest and stout Patagioenas pigeons that feed on fruit and berries high in the canopy. The Galápagos has a species of its own, the Galápagos Dove. The nest is a loose, often see-through platter of twigs in a shrub, on a ledge or in a fork, and in some mountain species in a rock crevice, holding almost always two white eggs; both parents incubate and feed the young on crop milk alone for the first days, so breeding also goes on outside the rains and clutches follow one another closely. The call is a muffled cooing made with the bill shut and the throat inflated, each species in a fixed rhythm: a steady three-part motif, a series that accelerates and falls away in pitch, or a short phrase hammered out over and over. Many species have a display flight in which the bird climbs steeply with clapping wings and then glides down on raised wings with the tail spread. Seed-eating species feed on the ground and gather in flocks at drinking places; the fruit-eating pigeons stay in the canopy and move with the fruiting.