Bird table diet is wiping out UK’S turtle doves

♦ The decline of the turtle dove is being hastened by its bird table diet, Rspb-backed research has suggested.

The number of breeding pairs has fallen 98per cent since the Seventies, with just 14,000 pairs visiting the UK. It is feared the African migrant dove could be wiped out in a few years.

The study, published in Molecular Ecology, found nestlings thrived on seeds foraged from non-cultivated arable plants. But the birds were in a poorer condition when their diet was high in seeds provided by humans.

The data – collected with the RSPB, and the universities of Sheffield and Cardiff – was compared with the results of studies from the Sixties and Nineties. It revealed that the birds now rely more heavily on garden food, such as sunflower and niger seeds.