Wild Facts About The Mourning Dove

Quick Facts About Mourning Doves

Scientific Name	Zenaida macroura
Family	Columbidae
Common Name(s)	Mourning Dove
Animal Type	Land Bird
Diet	Seeds, grains, fruits, cracked corn. Sometimes visits home bird feeders, especially in the winter; offer seed or cracked corn on the ground.
Found	One of the most abundant birds in North America. Found year-round throughout North Carolina. Look for Mourning Doves in the early morning or late afternoon near fields, gardens, and especially along roadsides. Mourning Doves like to perch on power lines.
Description	12 inches (30 cm). Plump but fast-flying birds. Mourning Doves have small heads and long, pointed, wedge-shaped tails edged in white. They have sand-colored backs, wings and tails, pale beige underparts, and black spots on their wings. Their heads have a black spot below each eye, pale blue eye rings, and short black bills. Their legs are orange. Male Mourning Doves have iridescent, faint pink and green neck feathers which females lack.

Mourning Dove Images

Mourning Dove. Zenaida macroura. Bird. Photograph taken by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.

Fun Facts About Mourning Doves

Mourning Doves Are Strict Vegetarians

Mourning Doves eat seeds and grain almost exclusively, even as nestlings.
- Mourning Doves feed their hatchlings regurgitated food in the form of “crop milk”, which consists of partially digested seeds.
- Many other birds — even those species that are vegetarian as adults — feed their hatchlings on animal matter, like insect larvae.
A study of 880 Mourning Doves in southern New Mexico analyzed their crop contents.
- Seven food plant types accounted for 93.8% of the total mass of crop contents:
  - Genus Croton accounted for 32.0% of the total mass of food and were present in 55% of crops.
  - Genus Euphorbia made up 24.5% of the total mass of food and occurred in 74% of crops.
  - Genus Helianthus (sunflowers) made up 24.4% of the total mass of food and were in 39% of crops.
  - The remaining four food items were from genera Panicum, Paspalum, Chenopodium, and Amaranthus and occurred in 29–56% of crops.
- Collectively, plant material accounted for 99.9% of total mass of Mourning Dove crops (Hunt and Best 2023, https://doi.org/10.1894/0038-4909-67.1.72).

Mourning Doves Defend Their Nests Against Nest Parasites

The Problem

Many birds are tricked into raising the young of other bird species to the detriment of their own reproduction.
- Nest parasitism is practiced by several types of birds. The most notorious nest parasite in North Carolina is the Brown-Headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater).
- Brown-Headed Cowbirds lay their own eggs in the nests of other birds.
- The cowbird hatchlings out-compete the young of the parent species.
- Parent birds who fail to recognize the cowbird eggs or hatchlings for what they are spend all their time and energy feeding the imposters instead of their own young.

Mourning Doves Recognize When They Have A Problem

Luckily, Mourning Doves seem to be more successful at recognizing the presence of Cowbird eggs and defending their nests from parasitism.
A study that researched rejection of Brown-Headed Cowbird eggs by Mourning Doves found no evidence of cowbird parasitism across 102 nests studied.
- Researchers located Mourning Dove nests and tested four scenarios:
  - Treatment 1: Replaced one dove egg out of a clutch of either one or two eggs with an artificial cowbird egg.
    - The Mourning Dove owners rejected 39 out of 73 fake cowbird eggs.
  - Treatment 2 switched a single real Mourning Dove egg with an artificial simulation of a Mourning Dove egg.
    - The Mourning Dove parents accepted all 14 dove egg replacements.
  - Treatment 3 replaced one real dove egg with an oversized, artificial cowbird egg sized to match the larger Mourning Dove eggs.
    - The Mourning Dove parents rejected 6 out of the 9 extra-large, fake cowbird eggs (3 by desertion, 1 by pecked, 1 by ejection).
  - Treatment 4 removed one Mourning Dove egg from clutches of two eggs without replacing it with anything.
    - The Mourning Doves deserted 3 out of 6 nests.
- Mourning Doves seem to recognize that Cowbird eggs are different from their own and reject them (Peer and Bollinger 1998, https://doi.org/10.2307/4089523).

Mourning Doves Like To Be Close To Humans — But Not Too Close

A study researched the nest-site choices of Mourning Doves within a 30 hectare section of Texas A&M University that contained a variety of both suburban and urban habitats and found that the studied Mourning Doves:
- Successfully raised young to greater than or equal to 10 days old in 337 out of 1,288 nests studied (26.6%).
- Preferred Live Oaks (Quercus virginiana) as nest sites, possibly because these trees grow horizontal limbs and lots of twigs to which the doves can anchor their nests and keep their leaves year-round, which hides the nests from predators.
- Chose trees with larger canopies and thicker trunks in which to build their nests.
- Had more successful nests the farther away from buildings they built their nests.
- Had more success raising young when they built nests slightly closer to roads (46 – 63 meters versus 73 – 85 meters for unsuccessful nest sites), possibly because Mourning Doves rely on eating grit to help grind their food within their crops and grit is easy to find near roads (Munoz et al. 2008, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-008-0066-7).

Other Fun Mourning Dove Facts

Even though Mourning Doves are often seen in the mornings, their common name is spelled “mourning”, after the soft, sad-sounding coo they make, not “morning”, like the time of day.
Unlike most birds, Mourning Doves can drink water without lifting their heads (Tekeila 2001).
Mourning Doves make a whistling sound when they fly, thanks to the way air rushes through their feathers and past their wings.
Mourning Doves feed their hatchlings differently from many other birds.
- Many bird species feed their babies by inserting their mouths into the mouths of the hatchlings.
- But Mourning Doves do the reverse; the babies force their mouths into the adults’ throats and drink the “pigeon milk” the parents regurgitate.
Unlike many other bird species, Mourning Doves don’t remove feces from their nests (Stokes and Stokes 1983).
Mourning Doves can resemble American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) during courtship displays. Male Mourning Doves perform a special “Flap-glide-flight” where they take off from their perches with a loud clapping of their wings, fly very high, and then spiral down with their wings held below their bodies (Stokes and Stokes 1983).
Like many birds, such as the American Robin (Turdus migratorius), Mourning Doves seem to enjoy sunbathing. They raise one wing at a time and turn broadside to the sun’s rays, so that the sunlight falls on underside of the wing and the side of their breast (Read 2005).

Christine

Christine is the creator and author of NowIWonder.com, a website dedicated to the animals and plants that share our world, and the science that helps us understand them. Inspired by lifelong exploration and learning, Christine loves to share her knowledge with others who want to connect with wild faces and wild spaces.

See Full Bio