thespotlightkid

By thespotlightkid

Collared dove

I saw the vertigo-inducing total of 4 species of birds in my garden on Saturday in one hour for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. Sunday was better with 8, including a blackcap, which I didn't know was there, so it was worthwhile.

The garden has been a lot more active today. The lawn has remained frost-covered all day and there have been many visitors, including this collared dove. Acknowledgements to wikipedia for the following:

The Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) is a species of dove native to Asia and Europe. Over the last century, it has been one of the great colonisers of the bird world. Its original range at the end of the 19th century was warm temperate and subtropical Asia from Turkey east to southern China and south through India to Sri Lanka. However, in the 20th century it expanded across Europe, appearing in the Balkans between 1900-1920, and then spreading rapidly northwest, reaching Germany in 1945, Great Britain by 1953 (breeding for the first time in 1956), Ireland in 1959, and the Faroe Islands in the early 1970s.

They have also colonised Florida and adjacent states, but I think that is from introduction rather than natural colonisation.

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