Common Ground Dove | Columbina passerina

Voice

The call is a soft, short, rising woo-oop or woop, repeated about once a second, sometimes dozens of times in a row. The sound seems to come from further away than the bird actually sits. It calls from a low branch, a post, a wire or the ground, mostly in the morning and towards evening. On take-off the wings make a brief whirring sound.

Identification

15–18 cm, small and compact, with a proportionately large head and a short dark tail. The plumage is sandy brown to grey-brown, with scattered black, sometimes purple-glossed spots on the wing coverts. Head, neck and breast are finely scaled by dark feather edges; the back is plain. The male has a pinkish wash over face, neck and breast and a blue-grey crown and nape; the female is greyer and plainer. The bill is pinkish red or orange-red at the base with a dark tip. In flight the primaries flash rufous, with dark tips. Several subspecies occur in the region, differing slightly in plumage tone and bill colour.

Confusion species

Three other small ground doves occur in Trinidad. Ruddy Ground Dove Columbina talpacoti is slightly larger, has a plain, unscaled breast and a grey to dark bill; the male is warm cinnamon. Plain-breasted Ground Dove Columbina minuta is a little smaller still, likewise plain-breasted, with a grey bill lacking red. Scaled Dove Columbina squammata is scaled over the whole body, has a long tail with white sides and flushes with an audible rattle. Elsewhere in the region the Common Ground Dove is the only dove this small; Zenaida Dove Zenaida aurita and Eared Dove Zenaida auriculata are much larger and show no rufous in the wing.

Habitat

Open and half-open country with bare or sandy patches: dry scrub and cactus scrub, coastal scrub and dunes, savanna, pastures, field margins, road verges, gardens and villages, from sea level into the lower parts of the mountains. On the dry islands, such as the ABC islands and the outer Bahamas, it is found throughout the scrub. It forages walking on the ground, singly, in pairs or in small groups, on small seeds and sometimes insects. The nest is placed low in a shrub, on a palm frond or on the ground.

Range and movements

Resident in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cuba with the Isla de la Juventud, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, throughout the arc of the Lesser Antilles including Barbados, on Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire and on San Andrés. In Trinidad scarce and local; it does not occur in Tobago. Beyond the region in the southern United States, Bermuda, through Mexico and Central America and in northern South America.

• Resident
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

Almost anywhere in the region in gardens, yards and along unpaved roads, especially early in the morning when the birds search bare ground for seed. They flush only when someone comes close; the rufous that then opens in the wing and the short tail without white confirm the identification. In Trinidad, parties of small doves deserve a second look, as Ruddy and Plain-breasted Ground Doves also occur there.

Conservation status

Not threatened. The species is common on most islands and has adapted well to land altered by people. Because it nests low and often on the ground, nests are often lost to cats, rats and mongooses, but no decline at the scale of the region is known.

Scientific name

Columbina passerina | (Linnaeus, 1758)

Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Columba passerina; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Columbina was introduced in 1825 by Spix. Columbina is Latin for 'little dove', a diminutive of columba 'dove'. passerina is Latin for 'sparrow-like', after the small size. The specimen the first description was based on came from South Carolina, United States.