Mourning Dove, Zenaida macroura

Mourning Dove, Zenaida macroura carolinensis. Photograph taken within a residential community in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 2022. Photographs and identifications courtesy of Faith Hubsch, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Mourning Dove, Zenaida macroura marginella. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, November 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

The Mourning Dove, Zenaida macroura carolinensis and Zenaida macroura marginella, are two of the five subspecies of Mourning Doves, two of which are found in Mexico. They are a member of the Columbidae Family of Pigeons and Doves, which has three hundred forty-eight members placed in forty-nine genera, and one of seven global species of the Zenaida Genus. They are known in Mexico as zenaida huilota.

The Mourning Dove is mid-sized in stature. The adult males and slightly more colorful than the females but the sexes are difficult to distinguish. They are grayish-blue or grayish-brown in color above and buffy below. They have black spots on the wing covers and behind the eye. Their tail and wing feathers are gray with a black boarded white tip on the tail. Their bill is black and they have dull red legs and feet. Their eyes are dark brown boarded by bluish skin. They have a streamlined body with a small head and a long graduated tail.

The Mourning Dove is a habitat generalist and have benefited by human development being found in both rural and urban landscapes and open habitats. They consume a wide variety of grains on an available basis that include seeds from cultivated and wild plants found on or near the ground. They feed in pairs during mating season and in large flocks during late summer and autumn. They are a strong flier capable of reaching 88 km per hour (55 mph). The Mourning Dove are prolific breeders capable of generating up to six clutches per year which in southern latitudes occurs year-round; clutch sizes are two. They have very short live spans and seldom live longer than one year.

The carolinensis has not been documented in Mexico. The marginella subspecies is found throughout Mexico. They are a partial migratory species. The northern populations of Canada and the United States are highly migratory and travel south for the winter in August and stay in Mexico until early May when they return north. Some southern populations are non-migratory and are year-round residents.

From a conservation perspective the Mourning Dove is endemic to North and Central American and is currently considered to be of Least Concern with abundant, stable, widely distributed populations. They are a popular bird due to the abundance, wide distribution, nests around yards, and frequent visits to bird feeders and easily recognized by their mournful call (for which they are named). They are actively pursued by recreational hunters and represent the most frequently targeted migratory game bird in North American pursued by over one million hunters that take more than twenty million birds per year. The Mourning Dove is known to the early and late Pleistocene Period, 1.8 million years ago.