Plain Southwestern Doves

     By cruising the internet, I found, live by camera, a bird feeder in the woods of Sabal Palm Sanctuary in the Rio Grande Valley at Brownsville, in the southern most tip of Texas.  That feeder attracts green jays, black-crested titmice, chachalacas, curve-billed thrashers, northern cardinals, three kinds of plain-looking doves- mourning, white-winged and white-tipped, and other bird species.  Sometimes all three types of doves are on that feeder at once, showing their similarities, and differences.  The brown feathering, with minimal markings, of the doves camouflages them well among vegetation and on the ground.
     These three species of doves have much in common besides being plain in feathering, showing their close relationship from a common ancestor.  They have all adapted to human-made habitats to their great benefit, and our pleasure in seeing them close-up and regularly.  They are all about ten inches long at maturity.  All dine mostly on seeds and waste grain of various kinds.  All come to feeders the year around, when given the opportunity.  They all also ingest small pebbles that help grind the seeds and grain in their powerful stomachs.  They all drink by dipping their beaks into water and pumping it up into their throats like mammals sucking up water. 
     Male doves coo, each kind having its own rythm of cooing to maintain territory and entice his life-long partner into mating.  Each female lays two white eggs in a clutch and attempts several broods of young during the warm months of each year.  Both genders of each pair of each species feeds throat phlegm and pre-digested seeds to their young in their flimsy nurseries of twigs and straw in trees, bushes and other sheltering plants.  And these doves are all highly prized by hunters, mostly because of their swift, challenging flight. 
     Mourning doves live and nest across the United States, from coast to coast, in very southern Canada and down into Mexico.  They nest in abundance in suburban areas and feed in grain fields after the harvests, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  This species has the most dark marking on its brown plumage, distinguishing it from its close relatives.  Starting in early spring, males call " oo-aa-ooo-ooo-ooo" with the "aa" being higher in pitch that the other notes.  Cooing rythms also identify each species.
     White-winged doves are distinguished by the white feathers on the lower margin of each wing when the birds are perched.  A large patch of white on each wing is noticed when these birds are in flight. 
     White wings nest in colonies of themselves inside dense, thorny, streamside woods, on cacti in cactus deserts and in suburban areas in the southwest United States, south to Panama and Cuba.  Males call a low "hhoooo-hhoooo-hoo-hhoooo".
     White-tipped doves are named for the white tip to their tails.  This plain dove lives and nests in scrub woods from very southern Texas south through Mexico and Central America, south to Argentina.  The Rio Grande Valley in the southern tip of Texas is as far north as they get.  Attractive chestnut linings on this dove's underwings, visible when they are in flight, are an interesting part of this bird's plumage.  Males utter a call of two low-pitched "hoos".
     It's interesting that three kinds of closely-related, plain-brown dove species live in the same habitat at Brownsville, Texas.  And one can see them by getting on line, or visiting Sabal Palm Sanctuary.