White-winged Dove

About the White-winged Dove

"Who cooks for you?" asks the White-winged Dove from a Texas utility pole, all summer long, in one of the most familiar sounds in the state. Stevie Nicks made the species famous; Texas made it abundant.

It is a big, square-tailed dove with a bold white slash along the folded wing that flares into brilliant crescents in flight, a red eye set in blue bare skin, and a confident, chunky presence at any feeder it decides to own.

The White-winged Dove's Texas story is remarkable. Once mainly a bird of the South Texas brush that migrated south each winter, it exploded northward through the late twentieth century, colonizing cities from San Antonio to Dallas and beyond - urban trees, bird feeders, and grain fields suiting it perfectly. Texas now hosts millions, many of them year-round city birds.

In the brushlands it still plays its old ecological role, timing nesting to cactus fruit and feeding on prickly pear tunas. Abundant, loud, and handsome, it has earned its place as the soundtrack of a Texas summer.