All species › Pigeons and doves › Doves and pigeons › Grey-headed Dove
Grey-headed Dove | Leptotila plumbeiceps
Grijskopduif | Paloma cabeza gris | Juriti-de-cabeça-cinza
The Grey-headed Dove is a Leptotila with a blue-grey crown and hindneck that contrast clearly with the olive-brown back. Its range runs from Mexico to western Colombia; in the guide area it is restricted to Colombia, where it lives mainly in the Cauca Valley. It walks on the ground in forest edges and thickets and is locally fairly common there.
Voice
A low, hollow, sustained woooo, sometimes preceded by a short soft note, repeated at intervals from the undergrowth.
Recording: Alfonso Auerbach — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
24–27 cm, with a medium-length, rounded tail. Crown and hindneck are blue-grey, the forehead paler grey, the cheeks pinkish grey to buff. The upperparts, wings and tail are olive brown. The throat is whitish, the breast washed pinkish grey to vinaceous, the belly and undertail coverts white. The bare skin around the eye is red, the iris yellow to orange, the legs red. The outer tail feathers have white tips; the underwing is rufous. The sexes are alike; young birds are browner, with rufous feather fringes.
Confusion species
White-tipped Dove Leptotila verreauxi has a greyish to greyish-brown crown without a sharp transition to the back, a blue eye-ring and a less pink breast. Grey-fronted Dove Leptotila rufaxilla in the east of the country has a whiter forehead and rufous sides to the head, and does not live in the same area. Grey-chested Dove Leptotila cassinii of the north-western lowlands has a plain grey breast and a less contrasting crown.
Habitat
Forest edges, old secondary forest, riparian woodland, thickets in farmland, shade coffee and large gardens and parks, mainly between 900 and 1700 m in the Cauca Valley, locally lower. It walks on the ground, alone or in pairs, and eats seeds, fallen fruit and small invertebrates. The nest is a platform of twigs in a shrub or low tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the west, mainly in the Cauca Valley and on the adjacent slopes of the Western and Central Andes, with records also from other parts of the north-west. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from eastern Mexico through Central America to Panama.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In thickets, riparian woodland and parks in the Cauca Valley, for example around Cali, where it forages on trails and grassy edges early in the morning and calls.
Conservation status
Not Evaluated in the current taxonomic arrangement. Locally fairly common and also present in secondary forest and parks, but its range in the guide area is small and heavily transformed by agriculture.
Scientific name
Leptotila plumbeiceps | Sclater & Salvin, 1868
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1868 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Leptotila was introduced in 1837 by Swainson. The genus name (originally Leptoptila) combines Greek leptos, 'delicate, slender', with ptilon, 'feather'. The species name combines Latin plumbeus, 'leaden', with -ceps, 'head'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Choctum, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.