WHY ARE MOURNING DOVES DIFFERENT FROM OTHER DOVES?

We know that doves are charming birds, and having them as pets is usually fun, and they bring hours of happy cooing to your ears. However, in the particular case of mourning doves and African collared doves, although they are two excellent birds as pets, they are usually hunted for food, as they are delicate and soft.

Most people find no difference between the two. However, although both doves belong to the Columbidae family, they have many significant differences, which we will explain below.

Why Are Mourning Doves Different From African Collared Doves?

To make it easy to distinguish a mourning dove from an African collared dove, you should learn the following four basic characteristics, which will help you tell them apart just by looking at them:

-Color

Mourning doves have:
● Pale brown back, wings, and tail,
● In-flight, the feathers are blackish and show extensive white on the tail.
●The head is gray.
● The underparts are pinkish, shading to pale gray on the belly.

African collared doves have:
● From shoulders to tail, a pale grayish-brown color, although a bluish tinge stands out on the edge of the wing.
● In-flight, feathers are darker and almost black.
● The head, neck, and chest are pinkish.
● The chin and belly tend to white.

-Size

A mourning dove can also be distinguished from an African collared dove simply by looking at the size. The largest species is the mourning dove up to 31 cm (about 12 inches) in length, and the smallest is the African collared dove, usually about 26 cm (about 10 inches) long.

-Tail

A slight difference in the tail can be seen between a mourning dove and an African collared dove. While the mourning dove has a small, pointed tail, and the African collared dove has a longer, squarer tail.

-Neck

There is a significant difference from the ringed neck. Mourning doves lack the half ring on the neck, while African collared doves have a black crescent on the nape.

Both the mourning doves and the African collared doves are considered calm and peaceful birds. However, compared to African collared doves, mourning doves are quiet and beautiful. Although African collared doves are also beautiful, they are not as handsome as their cousins.

Both doves are noisy, only that African collared doves are noisier. Compared to mourning doves, African collared doves are also more restless. Therefore, they tend to escape more frequently from captivity, establishing themselves in wild populations in cities of the United States.

Of these two doves, the mourning doves are the most hunted species in North America for the quality of their meat; they are tastier. Today both doves are symbols of peace.

We are a local dove breeder based in Nassau County, NY, for quite some time. We push our growing dove breeding business from our backyard, which means that we sell doves that we have raised since they were babies without intermediaries.

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