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Project Noah Nature School
Zenaida macroura
This female Mourning Dove is sitting in a nest she just built. She's brown to light gray with black spots on wings and a patch below her cheek. There's a white ring around the eye and pink feet. She's about 31 cm long (12 inches) and 4-6 ounces.
Avocado tree on hill in backyard. We have a gazebo that extends to this tree so we can see her while we're sitting there. This tree is located above a pond. "The Mourning Dove has a large range of nearly 11 million square kilometers (6.8 million square miles). The species is resident throughout the Greater Antilles, most of Mexico, the Continental United States, and southern Canada." - Wikipedia
"This species' call is a distinctive, plaintive cooOOoo-woo-woo-woooo, uttered by males to attract a mate, and may be mistaken for the call of an owl at first. (Close up, a grating or throat-rattling sound may be heard preceding the first coo.) Other sounds include a nest call (cooOOoo) by paired males to attract their mates to the nest sites, a greeting call (a soft ork) by males upon rejoining their mates, and an alarm call (a short roo-oo) by either male or female when threatened. In flight, the wings make a fluttery whistling sound that is hard to hear. The wing whistle is much louder and more noticeable upon take-off and landing." - Wikipedia
Spotted on Feb 29, 2012
Submitted on Feb 29, 2012
2 Comments
:) I think she is too!
uau:)Beautiful mom