All species › Pigeons and doves › Pigeons and doves › European Turtle Dove
European Turtle Dove | Streptopelia turtur
Zomertortel | Tórtola europea
The region's only truly migratory dove: a breeder of olive groves, oases and scrub from Morocco to Iraq, and a mass migrant across the Sahara and Sinai. At the same time a species in serious trouble, hunted on a large scale in the region.
Voice
A deep, sustained purring turrr-turrr, usually in series of three to five, with a drowsy, humming tone. Heard from April into July, especially after sunrise and in the last light.
Recording: Tony Rinaud — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Small, slender dove with orange-brown, black-scaled upperwing coverts, a blue-grey head and a pink breast. On the side of the neck a patch of black stripes on white. The dark tail has a broad white tip, striking as soon as the bird flies off. Flight fast and agile, with sharply angled wings. The Egyptian and eastern forms (rufescens and arenicola) are paler and warmer sandy. Juveniles are duller and lack the neck stripes.
Confusion species
Oriental Turtle-Dove (Streptopelia orientalis) is larger and darker, with a grey rather than white tail tip, a greyer rump and blue-grey rather than white neck stripes. Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) is larger, paler and plain, with a black neck band. Laughing Dove (Spilopelia senegalensis) lacks the scaly wing and has a spotted breast shield.
Habitat
Olive groves, orchards, palm groves and oases, maquis, tamarisk scrub along wadis and rivers, and the edges of irrigated farmland. It needs dense trees or shrubs for nesting, weed seeds on the ground and water nearby. On passage also in open desert, where it rests at oases and wells.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Breeds in Morocco (from the coast and the Atlas to the oases beyond), northern Algeria and Tunisia and the Saharan oases further south, north-west Libya and Cyrenaica, and in Egypt along the Nile, in the delta, the Fayoum and the western oases. In the east in Israel, Samaria and Judea, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. On the Arabian Peninsula mainly a passage migrant, with scattered breeding in the north. On passage across the whole Sahara, Sinai and western Arabia. Also breeds across almost all of Europe and into Central Asia; winters in the Sahel from Senegal to Ethiopia.
- 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
In April and May check the oases of southern Morocco, the Egyptian desert or Eilat for tired migrants dropping in at water. In the breeding season its purring gives it away in olive groves early in the morning.
Conservation status
Globally Vulnerable (IUCN). Declining steeply throughout its range. On its migration route through the region it is shot and netted on a large scale, notably along Egypt's Mediterranean coast, in Lebanon and Syria, and in the Maghreb, where legal summer hunting also takes place. Added to this are the loss of scrub and weed seeds in farming and drought in the Sahel.
Scientific name
Streptopelia turtur | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Columba Turtur; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Streptopelia was introduced in 1855 by Bonaparte. Streptopelia is Greek, from streptos 'collar, twisted chain' and peleia 'dove', after the dark neck collar of these doves. turtur is the Latin word for turtle dove, onomatopoeic for its purring song. The specimen the first description was based on came from England.