70-year reign right over us

An endearing garden bird is celebrating its own remarkable Platinum Jubilee this summer.

Almost every day of the Queen’s glorious reign has been accompanied by the lilting song of the collared dove, which first arrived in the British Isles 70 years ago after one of the most dramatic range expansions of any bird on record.

The nearest place you could see these unobtrusive birds at the beginning of the 20th Century was Turkey.

Over the next five decades their breeding range expanded at a pace of 27 miles a year, allowing them to establish successive populations in the Balkans, Germany, the Low Countries, France and Scandinavia by the beginning of the 1950s.

Only weeks after Elizabeth II ascended to the throne in 1952, the first official sighting of a single collared dove was recorded in the parish of Manton, close to Lincolnshire’s Humber estuary.

Within four years, the gentle cooing of a pair was heard in north Norfolk, where a nest was then discovered containing two young birds. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, the doves’ three syllable song – likened by some people as sounding like bored football fans chanting “u-ni-ted… u-ni-ted” – is part of both the rural and urban soundscape.

As many as 800,000 pairs are nesting nationwide across farmland as well as in parks and gardens.

Leylandii trees are a particular favourite as they provide dense cover for the birds to breed most months of the year.

Although a dowdy blend of greys and browns, the collared dove makes up for its downbeat plumage by being immortalised in Greek mythology.

So angered were the gods about the plight of a young, overworked servant girl that they transformed her into a dove so she could escape her miserable existence.

The story is today recognised in the bird’s scientific name: Streptopelia decaocto.

This translates as a “dove with throat markings”, while decaocto – Greek for 18 – represents the paltry number of coins the servant girl was paid each year.

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