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White-winged Dove | Zenaida asiatica
Witvleugeltreurduif | Paloma alas blancas
The White-winged Dove is a sturdy grey-brown dove with a white wing edge, long a common bird in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. In the last decades of the twentieth century it began to spread eastwards, and it is now established on a string of islands in the northern Lesser Antilles. In Cuba it is called guanaro. It is one of the region's most important game doves.
Voice
A rhythmic, husky cooing in four or five syllables, rendered in English as who cooks for you, often stressed on the second syllable. Also a drawn-out hoo-oo-oo-oo. The wings clatter audibly on take-off.
Recording: Bill Pyle — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
28–32 cm, a heavy, rather short dove with a square, rounded tail. The upperparts are grey-brown, head and breast paler and brownish-grey with a wine-coloured tinge. A narrow white stripe runs along the closed wing, which in flight becomes a broad white band across the wing, sharply set off against the dark flight feathers. Below the eye is a short black cheek streak. The eye is orange-red, surrounded by a ring of blue bare skin. The tail is grey with a black band and broad white corners. The legs are red. The sexes are similar; juveniles are duller, with a brown eye.
Confusion species
The white wing band is virtually unique in the region. Zenaida Dove Zenaida aurita has only a narrow white trailing edge to the secondaries, warmer brown plumage and black spots on the wing. Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura is slimmer, with a long pointed tail and no white in the wing. Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto and African Collared Dove S. roseogrisea are paler, with a black neck collar. Saint Martin also holds Bare-eyed Pigeon Patagioenas corensis, which has a white wing patch but is larger, with a wine-red head and a scaled neck.
Habitat
Dry forest and dry scrub, cactus scrub, mangrove and coastal woodland, as well as open country with scattered trees, fields, gardens and villages; in towns regularly at bird tables and on lawns. It eats seeds, fruit and berries, including those of cacti, foraging both on the ground and in trees. The nest is an untidy platform of twigs in a tree or shrub; outside the breeding season often in flocks at food and water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Common in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico, and also on San Andrés. Since the late twentieth century the species has spread across the Virgin Islands and the northern Lesser Antilles: Anguilla, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat and the surrounding islands. The first birds were seen on Guadeloupe and Dominica at the end of 2008; further south it is still scarce or irregular. Beyond the region from the southern United States through Mexico to Central America.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the Greater Antilles and the Cayman Islands common in gardens, parks and dry coastal country, where the cooing is heard mainly early in the morning. In the northern Lesser Antilles the species is often found around buildings and at bird tables. In flight the white wing band is distinctive.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally, with a large and growing range. In the Caribbean common to very common, and still advancing in the northern Lesser Antilles. The species is hunted on several islands. In the Cayman Islands its increase appears to come at the expense of Zenaida Dove, with which it competes for food and nest sites.
Scientific name
Zenaida asiatica | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Columba asiatica; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Zenaida was introduced in 1838 by Bonaparte. Zenaida honours Zénaïde Bonaparte (1801–1854), wife of the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, who named the genus in 1838. asiatica is Latin for 'Asian': Linnaeus wrongly believed the bird came from the Indies. The specimen the first description was based on came from Jamaica.