Mourning Dove

About the Mourning Dove

The soft, mournful cooing that names this dove is one of the most familiar bird sounds in America, as is the sharp whistle of its wings on takeoff - a sound made by the feathers themselves. Mourning Doves are prodigious breeders, raising up to six broods a year in Texas on flimsy stick nests, feeding the young "crop milk" like all doves. They swallow seeds whole into the crop and fly to grit and water at dawn and dusk, and despite being North America's most hunted game bird the continental population remains in the hundreds of millions.