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Blue Ground Dove | Claravis pretiosa
Blauwe grondduif | Tórtola azul
The Blue Ground Dove is a small dove of forest edges and open woodland in tropical America, which within the region occurs only in Trinidad. Male and female differ so strongly that at first sight they could pass for two species: the male is almost entirely blue-grey, the female warm brown. Unlike most small ground doves it is not confined to open country but also keeps to forest tracks and clearings, and the male often calls from high in a tree.
Voice
From the treetops the male gives a loud, single boop, repeated at regular intervals and carrying far. The calling bird often sits high and hidden among the leaves. On take-off the wings clatter audibly.
Recording: Richard E. Webster — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 20 cm, slightly larger and slimmer than Ruddy Ground Dove, with a medium-length tail. The male is uniform blue-grey above and paler grey below, becoming almost white on the face. The wing carries a few large black spots and bars, and the outer tail feathers are black, which shows on take-off. The female is grey-brown to warm brown on head, neck and breast, with chestnut spots on the wing, a rufous rump and a paler belly tending to grey; the underwing is pale blue-grey. Juveniles resemble the female but are duller, with pale fringes to the feathers of the upperparts. The sexes can therefore be told apart, even at some distance.
Confusion species
No other dove in Trinidad is as uniformly blue-grey as the male. The female may be confused with female Ruddy Ground Dove Columbina talpacoti, which is smaller and more compact, has black rather than chestnut wing spots and lives mainly in open, built-up country. Plain-breasted Ground Dove Columbina minuta is clearly smaller, grey-brown with purplish wing spots and short-tailed; it lives in open grassland. Grey-fronted Dove Leptotila rufaxilla is much larger and heavier, with a pale belly and white tail tips, and walks on the ground in the shade of the forest.
Habitat
Open woodland, forest edges, clearings and wooded roadsides, especially in the more humid parts of the island. It occurs singly, in pairs or sometimes in small groups. It feeds mainly on the ground, on tracks and in clearings, taking seeds and small insects, and swallows grit to aid digestion. The nest is a flimsy, flat structure of twigs, from one to over ten metres up in a tree, with two white eggs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Within the region only in Trinidad, where it occurs in forest and along forest edges but is seldom reported and regarded as scarce. It does not occur in Tobago or on the other islands. Beyond the region it is a resident from south-eastern Mexico through Central America to north-western Peru, and east of the Andes to northern Argentina.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The call is the best lead: a repeated, loud boop from the treetops along a forest road or edge. The male then often sits on a branch high in a tree and takes some searching to find. Birds feeding on a forest track or in a clearing flush fast and low when disturbed; the blue-grey of the male and the black outer tail feathers are then the first things to catch the eye.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Across its large mainland range the species is widespread and locally common, and it benefits from forest edges and clearings. In Trinidad it is scarce; no data on numbers or trends on the island are known. As an edge species it is less sensitive to fragmentation than true forest-interior birds, but it does depend on the island's remaining forest.
Scientific name
Claravis pretiosa | (Ferrari-Pérez, 1886)
Ferrari-Pérez described the species in 1886 as Peristera pretiosa; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Claravis was introduced in 1899 by Oberholser. Claravis is Latin, from clarus 'clear, bright' and avis 'bird'. pretiosa is Latin for 'precious', after the handsome blue-grey plumage of the male. The specimen the first description was based on came from Brazil.