Pigeons and doves
Though arguably not the most showy and crowd-pleasing group of birds, the UK’s resident pigeons and doves (the words are largely interchangeable) are all what you could call handsome, if not devastatingly pretty. The prettiest is the Turtle Dove, but those are summer visitors, and not part of this month’s story…
Woodpigeon
One of our commonest birds (with more than five million breeding pairs), and our only properly large pigeon (the next size up from the rest), the Woodpigeon is a very familiar bird. Grey and pink, with a broad white ‘collar’ and an obvious white band on the wing (visible in flight). The drawn out cooing song is heard throughout the year, as these birds will breed at virtually any time!
Rock Dove/Feral Pigeon
Feral Pigeons are ignored by many birdwatchers as somehow corrupted invaders, with some tickers refusing to even put them on their lists. This is partly because of the bewildering array of plumages revealing their human-selected genetics of undeniable captive origin. But they are as valid a part of our avifauna as say, Little Owl, Mute Swan, Red-legged Partridge, Gadwall, Egyptian Goose, Pheasant or Mandarin. More so, actually, than most of these, as the species is a true native, still apparently surviving in the original form as the Rock Dove, in some remote coastal cliffs. Which individuals you can tick as wild is up to you!
Stock Dove
The archetypal ‘invisible bird’, half a million or more Stock Doves are hiding in plain sight in the UK. Partly overlooked as Feral Pigeons, the rest are overlooked as Woodpigeons, but rarely are they acknowledged. We birders know better, though, and admire these pretty doves as the subtly handsome birds they are. Once you know their fruity ‘songs’, you will notice the raunchy sound coming from many a stand of trees, and once you know their grey underwings and dark surrounded wings, you start seeing them everywhere.
Collared Dove
Also, like the Feral Pigeon, falsely disparaged as an introduced species, the Collared Dove came under its own steam from the east, first breeding in the UK in the 1950s. Now there are a million pairs in the suburbs and farms of the country. Sandy, smallish and easily identified, they are generally gentle souls. The three-note song of the Collared Dove is one of the most familiar sounds of British gardens of the modern era.