Mourning dove

Mourning doves eat seeds, seeds and more seeds.

They peck them up from the ground.

About 99 percent of a mourning dove's food is seeds: grain from crops, and seeds of grasses, ragweed and many other plants. It feeds mostly on the ground, often under bird feeders, picking up fallen seeds.

A dove's beak is soft and not good at cracking tough seeds, so it swallows them whole. It quickly fills a pouch in its throat, called a crop, then rests while it digests. It also swallows small bits of gravel that help grind up hard seeds.

Audubon says the mourning dove feeds almost entirely on seeds (about 99% of the diet), favoring cultivated grains and the seeds of grasses, ragweeds and many other plants, and only occasionally eats snails and very rarely insects. It forages mainly on the ground, eats quickly to fill its crop and digests while resting, and regularly swallows grit to help digest hard seeds.

MDC notes that doves' relatively soft bills are inefficient at cracking tough seeds, so seeds are swallowed whole and broken down by the muscular crop. Doves and pigeons, unlike most other birds, can drink with their heads down rather than scooping water and tipping the head back (MDC).

Mourning doves make a soft coo-ah, coo, coo, coo.

Many fly south in big flocks for the winter.

The mourning dove's low, mournful 'coo-ah, coo, coo, coo' is one of the most familiar bird sounds in North America, and it gives the bird its name. In courtship, a male flies up with noisy wingbeats, then glides in a long circle with his wings spread. On the ground he puffs out his chest, bows and coos to the female, and mated pairs may preen each other.

In late summer young doves gather in flocks. Many birds from the north fly south in the fall, traveling by day in flocks.

Audubon calls the low, mournful 'coo-ah, coo, coo, coo' the origin of the name, and describes a courtship flight of noisy wingbeats followed by a long circular glide with wings spread and slightly bowed, a ground display in which the male approaches stiffly, chest puffed, bowing and cooing emphatically, and mutual preening between mates. MDC writes the song as a soft 'coo-AH-oo, oo, oo, ooo'.

Audubon says some birds remain through winter over most of the breeding range, while many move south from northern areas in fall, migrating mostly by day in flocks. In Missouri, juveniles begin flocking in July and August and most doves leave by 15 October, though places with plenty of food and roosts hold flocks all year (MDC).

Listen to the sound at the start of this page.

It is a real mourning dove cooing in New Mexico.

At the start of this page you can play a real recording of a mourning dove's coo. Scientists Clinton D. Francis, Catherine P. Ortega and Alexander Cruz recorded it for a study of noise and birds in the woodlands of north-western New Mexico, in 2009.

Listen for how low the coo is. In their study, birds with low-pitched calls, like the mourning dove, were found in smaller numbers in noisy places than in quiet ones.

The recording on this page is a sample from Francis, Ortega and Cruz (2011), 'Noise Pollution Filters Bird Communities Based on Vocal Frequency' (PLOS ONE), made in the Rattlesnake Canyon Habitat Management Area, a piñon-juniper woodland in the San Juan Basin of north-western New Mexico, where vocalizations were recorded between 11 May and 2 July 2009. The study found that species with lower-frequency vocalizations, including the mourning dove, had strong negative responses to noise, measured by comparing nests and birds at noisy and quiet sites.

There are many, many mourning doves.

They do well near people, in farms and towns.

The mourning dove is listed as least concern. There are well over a hundred million of them, though their numbers are slowly going down. They do very well in places people have changed, like farms and towns.

Mourning doves are a popular game bird in places such as Missouri. Where hunting is heavy, doves can swallow fallen lead shot while pecking for seeds, which can poison them.

BirdLife International assessed Zenaida macroura as Least Concern for the IUCN Red List (assessed 12 June 2024, published 2024): an extremely large range and population, with a slow decline not approaching the thresholds. The IUCN text cites a Partners in Flight (2020) global estimate of 150 million mature individuals, 130 million in the USA and Canada, where the trend is slightly negative (Partners in Flight 2024); the assessment's data field gives 120 to 140 million. It notes a medium dependency on forest habitat and a 14.7% loss of tree cover within its mapped range over three generations (14.82 years).

Audubon says the species does very well in human-altered habitats. MDC notes it is a popular game bird and that in heavily hunted areas doves can accidentally eat fallen lead shot and suffer lead poisoning.