A TALE OF TWO DOVES

   A recent phone call from my mother informed me that she had a Turtle Dove back in her garden this year so on Wednesday I set up my hide in the back garden and sat down to wait. After a couple of hours with only Wood Pigeons and the usual other garden species appearing I could see a dove flying in from the fields behind the house and excitement mounted only to be dashed when the bird landed and I saw it was a Stock Dove. I shouldn't have been disappointed as these birds are quite attractive in their own right and a pair of them are regularly seen here all year round so I snapped off a few pictures and returned to waiting to no avail as the only other thing of note was a Sparrowhawk terrorising the bird feeder visitors.

   After returning home Mum called again yesterday to say that the Turtle Dove had been there all afternoon so I made a return trip today and went through the same process of setting up the hide and waiting again. However this time I didn't have long to wait and the super looking Turtle Dove flew in and landed on the lawn. The bird moved under the feeder and began to feed on the spilt seed remnants where it remained oblivious to my presence only a few yards away allowing me to take as many pictures as I wanted.
   Unlike the other species of dove Turtle Doves don't stay in this country all year but instead migrate down to Africa with most leaving by September and returning the following April/ May. In the last 30 or 40 years numbers of these birds have fallen alarmingly and all the conservation bodies are very concerned that they will become extinct in this country if the present trends continue. There is no doubt that many birds are shot each year as they make their way through the Mediterranean countries but whether this accounts for the drastic fall in numbers is open to contention and most experts think that the changes in our farming practices are also to blame. Whatever the cause hopefully the decline in numbers can at least be halted if not reversed as there is no doubt that our country would be a poorer place to live in without these gorgeous little doves pictured below.