Inca Dove | Columbina inca

Voice

The call is a monotonously repeated two-note coo-poo or no-hope, stressed on the first syllable, often for hours from a roof, a wire or a branch. Also a soft, guttural cooing in display. On take-off the wings give a dry rattle.

Identification

19–23 cm, slender, with a long, narrow tail making up almost half the length. The plumage is grey-brown to sandy, paler and pinkish-tinged on the head and breast, and scaled almost everywhere by dark feather edges. The tail has broad white sides that show on take-off and landing. In flight the primaries flash chestnut. The eye is red, the bill dark and the legs pink. The male is slightly paler and pinker on the head and breast than the female; juveniles are duller and less clearly scaled. The wings make a dry, rattling sound on take-off.

Confusion species

Common Ground Dove Columbina passerina is also scaled, but only on the head, neck and breast; it is stockier, with a short dark tail without white sides, black spots on the wing and a reddish bill base. Ruddy Ground Dove Columbina talpacoti is unscaled and shorter-tailed. Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura also has a long tail with white, but is much larger and unscaled, with a black cheek spot and no chestnut in the wing.

Habitat

Villages, towns, gardens, parks, yards, corrals, fields and pasture, as well as dry scrub, thorn forest and semi-desert, especially near water and human settlement; from sea level to about 2500 m. It searches bare ground on foot for small seeds, usually in pairs or small groups. In cold weather birds sometimes huddle in a pyramid two or three layers high. The nest is a small platform of twigs in a shrub, a tree or on a building.

Range and movements

Most of Mexico, from Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas south to Oaxaca and Chiapas, with its stronghold in the dry interior and along the Pacific coast; largely absent from the humid south-eastern lowlands and the Yucatán Peninsula. Further in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, mainly on the Pacific side and in dry interior valleys, and in north-western Costa Rica. Outside the guide area in the south-western United States, from California to Texas.

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

How and when to look

In northern and central Mexico and in the dry Pacific lowlands of Central America the species can be found in almost every village and town square. The repeated coo-poo usually gives the birds away before they are seen. A flushing bird with a long, white-edged tail and chestnut wings is almost certainly an Inca Dove.

Conservation status

Not threatened. The species is common and benefits from human settlement, agriculture and irrigation. Over the last century its range has expanded both north into the United States and south into Central America.

Scientific name

Columbina inca | (Lesson, 1847)

Lesson described the species in 1847 as Chamaepelia inca; 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'. inca refers to the Incas of Peru, although the species does not occur there; why Lesson chose this name for a Mexican bird is unclear. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mexico.