Doves and pigeons | Columbidae

Duiven | Palomas

The family here runs from small woodland doves with metallic spots on the wing and long-tailed desert species to stout rock and mountain pigeons and green fruit pigeons that clamber about in figs, hanging head-down at the clusters. The nest is a loose, often see-through platter of twigs in a shrub, on a ledge or in a fork, holding almost always two white eggs; both parents incubate and feed the young on crop milk alone for the first days, so breeding also goes on outside the rains and clutches follow one another closely. The call is a muffled cooing made with the bill shut and the throat inflated, each species in a fixed rhythm: a steady three-part motif, a series that accelerates and falls away in pitch, or a short phrase hammered out over and over. Many species have a display flight in which the bird climbs steeply with clapping wings and then glides down on raised wings with the tail spread. Seed-eating species feed on the ground and gather in flocks at drinking places; the fruit pigeons stay in the canopy and move with the fruiting.