Mourning Dove

识别特征

The mourning dove is a medium-sized, slender dove approximately 31 cm (12 in) in length. Mourning doves weigh 112–170 g (4.0–6.0 oz), usually closer to 128 g (4.5 oz). The mourning dove has a wingspan of 37–45 cm. The elliptical wings are broad, and the head is rounded. Its tail is long and tapered ("macroura" comes from the Greek words for "large" and "tail"). Mourning doves have perching feet, with three toes forward and one reversed. The legs are short and reddish colored. The beak is short and dark, usually a brown-black hue.<p>The plumage is generally light gray-brown and lighter and pinkish below. The wings have black spotting, and the outer tail feathers are white, contrasting with the black inners. Below the eye is a distinctive crescent-shaped area of dark feathers. The eyes are dark, with light blue skin surrounding them. The adult male has bright purple-pink patches on the neck sides, with light pink coloring reaching the breast. The crown of the adult male is a distinctly bluish-grey color. Females are similar in appearance but with more brown coloring overall and a little smaller than the male. The iridescent feather patches on the neck above the shoulders are nearly absent but can be quite vivid on males. Juvenile birds have a scaly appearance and are generally darker.<p>Feather colors are generally believed to be relatively static, changing only by small amounts over periods of months. However, a 2011 study argued that since feathers have neither nerves or blood vessels, color changes must be caused by external stimuli. Researchers analyzed how feathers of iridescent mourning doves responded to stimulus changes of adding and evaporating water. As a result, it was discovered that iridescent feather color changed hue, became more chromatic, and increased overall reflectance by almost 50%. Transmission electron microscopy and thin-film models revealed that color is produced by thin-film interference from a single layer of keratin around the edge of feather barbules, under which lies a layer of air and melanosomes. Once the environmental conditions were changed, the most striking morphological difference was a twisting of colored barbules that exposed more of their surface area for reflection, which explains the observed increase in brightness. Overall, the researchers suggest that some plumage colors may be more changeable than previously thought possible.<p>All five subspecies of the mourning dove look similar and are not easily distinguishable. The nominate subspecies possesses shorter wings and are darker and more buff-colored than the "average" mourning dove. Z. m. carolinensis has longer wings and toes, a shorter beak, and is darker in color. The western subspecies has longer wings, a longer beak and shorter toes, and is more muted and lighter in color. The Panama mourning dove has shorter wings and legs, a longer beak, and is grayer in color. The Clarion Island subspecies possesses larger feet, a larger beak, and is darker brown in color.<p>This species' call is a distinctive, plaintive cooOOoo-wooo-woo-woooo, uttered by males to attract females, and it may be mistaken for the call of an owl at first. (Close up, a grating or throat-rattling sound may be heard preceding the first coo.) Other sounds include a nested call (cooOOoo) by paired males to attract their female mates to the nest sites, a greeting call (a soft ork) by males upon rejoining their mates, and an alarm call (a short roo-oo) by either a male or female when threatened. In flight, the wings make a fluttery whistling sound that is hard to hear. The wing whistle is much louder and more noticeable upon take-off and landing.

分类信息

In 1731, the English naturalist Mark Catesby described and illustrated the passenger pigeon and the mourning dove on successive pages of his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. For the passenger pigeon he used the common name "Pigeon of passage" and the scientific Latin Palumbus migratorius; for the mourning dove he used "Turtle of Carolina" and Turtur carolinensis. In 1743, the naturalist George Edwards included the mourning dove with the English name "long-tail'd dove" and the Latin name Columba macroura in his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. Edwards's pictures of the male and female doves were drawn from live birds that had been shipped to England from the West Indies. In 1758, when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he conflated the two species. He used the Latin name Columba macroura introduced by Edwards as the binomial name but included a description mainly based on Catesby. He cited Edwards's description of the mourning dove and Catesby's description of the passenger pigeon. Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae again in 1766 for the twelfth edition. He dropped Columba macroura and instead coined Columba migratoria for the passenger pigeon, Columba cariolensis for the mourning dove and Columba marginata for Edwards's mourning dove.<p>To resolve the confusion over the binomial names of the two species, Francis Hemming proposed in 1952 that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) secure the specific name macroura for the mourning dove and migratorius for the passenger pigeon, since this was the intended use by the authors on whose work Linnaeus had based his description. This was accepted by the ICZN, which used its plenary powers to designate the species for the respective names in 1955.<p>The mourning dove is now placed in the genus Zenaida, introduced in 1838 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, commemorating his wife Zénaïde. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek makros meaning "long" and -ouros meaning "-tailed".<p>The mourning dove is closely related to the eared dove (Zenaida auriculata) and the Socorro dove (Zenaida graysoni). Some authorities consider them a superspecies, and the three birds are sometimes classified in the separate genus Zenaidura, but the current classification has them as separate species in the genus Zenaida. In addition, the Socorro dove has at times been considered conspecific with the mourning dove, though several differences in behavior, call, and appearance justify separation as two different species. While the three species do form a subgroup of Zenaida, using a separate genus would interfere with the monophyly of Zenaida by making it paraphyletic.<p>There are five subspecies:<p>The ranges of most of the subspecies overlap a little, with three in the United States or Canada. The West Indian subspecies is found throughout the Greater Antilles. It has recently invaded the Florida Keys. The eastern subspecies is found mainly in eastern North America, as well as Bermuda and the Bahamas. The western subspecies are found in western North America, including parts of Mexico. The Panamanian subspecies is in Central America. The Clarion Island subspecies is found only on Clarion Island, off Mexico's Pacific coast.<p>The mourning dove is sometimes called the "American mourning dove" to distinguish it from the distantly related mourning collared dove (Streptopelia decipiens) of Africa. It was also formerly known as the "Carolina turtledove" and the "Carolina pigeon". The "mourning" part of its common name comes from its doleful call.<p>The mourning dove was thought to be the passenger pigeon's closest living relative on morphological grounds until genetic analysis showed Patagioenas pigeons are more closely related. The mourning dove was even suggested to belong to the same genus, Ectopistes, and was listed by some authors as E. carolinensis. The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s.

学名

Zenaida macroura

命名信息

(Linnaeus, 1758)

目

Columbiformes

科

Columbidae

属

Zenaida

分布与栖息地

The mourning dove has a large range of nearly 11,000,000 km2 (4,200,000 sq mi). The species is resident throughout the Greater Antilles, most of Mexico, the Continental United States, southern Canada, and the Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda. Much of the Canadian prairie sees these birds in summer only, and southern Central America sees them in winter only. The species is a vagrant in northern Canada, Alaska, and South America. It has been spotted as an accidental at least seven times in the Western Palearctic with records from the British Isles (5), the Azores (1) and Iceland (1). In 1963, the mourning dove was introduced to Hawaii, and in 1998 there was still a small population in North Kona. The mourning dove also appeared on Socorro Island, off the western coast of Mexico, in 1988, sixteen years after the Socorro dove was extirpated from that island.<p>The mourning dove occupies a wide variety of open and semi-open habitats, such as urban areas, farms, prairie, grassland, and lightly wooded areas. It avoids swamps and thick forest.<p>Most mourning doves migrate along flyways over land. Birds in Canada migrate the farthest, probably wintering in Mexico or further south. Those that spend the summer further south are more sedentary, with much shorter migrations. At the southern part of their range, Mourning Doves are present year-round.<p>Spring migration north runs from March to May. Fall migration south runs from September to November, with immatures moving first, followed by adult females and then by adult males. Migration is usually during the day, in flocks, and at low altitudes.

迁徙

Complete migrants

行为

Migration pattern: Complete migrants.

保护状况

Population trend: rising.

种群趋势

rising