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Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur)

“Turtle” or “turtur” might seem a strange name for a dove, but it arises from this bird’s repetitive advertising call, “trrr, trrr”, a soporific purr that emanates from some hidden perch any time between late April and August. When making the sound the birds bow their heads with their lower neck swollen, as if suddenly weighed down by something they had ingested, and make slight nodding movements in time with the sounds. The performance has three peaks, the early morning, late afternoon and, perhaps surprisingly, around mid-day. Its main function is to attract females.

Turtle Doves are also vigorously territorial, and will fight if necessary to hold on to what they have. To prevent this happening, though, they have a display flight, which is performed at the slightest sign of another bird appearing, even if it is only flying overhead. The occupier takes off at a sharp angle, sometimes with a few wing-claps, gets to about 20m, stalls and spirals down, spreading its tail to ensure that the white border is shown off to advantage, often not landing immediately but gliding along for a final flourish. These display flights may also be performed as part of the courtship display, but with somewhat eager and faster flaps at the start.

The nest is built low down in a shrub or a hedge, and consists of the flimsy “cowboy builder” type of meagre platform typical of pigeons; but as if the Turtle Doves were acknowledging their lack of nesting prowess, it is sometimes placed on top of the structure of another bird. The female lays two eggs and, as is the pigeon way, both the squabs are fed on crop milk. Uniquely among pigeons anywhere in the world, once one brood has left the nest there is a biologically enforced hiatus, ensuring that the birds do not rush into the next breeding attempt too quickly.

There is something else highly unusual about the Turtle Dove and that is that, alone among our pigeons, it is exclusively a summer visitor, the birds departing for Africa in September and returning in April. They migrate by day on a broad front, often in large numbers; 20,000 have been counted passing Malta in a single day.

The Turtle Dove is our only pigeon that avoids built up areas. It is still a common bird, though, wherever there is light woodland or hedgerow, especially in warm, sunny, sheltered spots.