Doves & Pigeons

Here’s a fun one to start with: doves and pigeons are the same thing. They all belong to one family, and there’s no real rule for which ones get called doves and which ones get called pigeons.

You’d never know it from the way we treat them, though. Doves are symbols of peace. Pigeons get shooed off sidewalks, and plenty of people see them as junk birds. That’s a tough reputation for the family that gave us carrier pigeons. Here’s the funny part: the white dove of peace is really just a white pigeon. Sometimes the only difference between a dove and a pigeon is the name we gave it.

If you’ve noticed a pale, chunky dove on a Utah power line lately, there’s a good chance it wasn’t a Mourning Dove. The Eurasian Collared-Dove is a newcomer, and it got here remarkably fast.

It started in the Bahamas in 1974. Someone broke into a breeder’s aviary, a few doves escaped, and the owner released the rest, probably fewer than 50 birds. By 1982 they were nesting in Florida, and from there they just kept going north and west.

Utah’s first official record came from Orem in the summer of 1997. By 2005, they were turning up in so many towns that Utah birders took them off the rare-bird review list. Today they’re found across most of North America, with records as far north as Alaska. Not bad for a pet-shop escape! Sometimes the bird you see every day is the newest one in town.

So how do you tell the newcomer from the native? Start with the wings. A Mourning Dove has black spots on its wings. A Collared-Dove is paler and chunkier, with plain wings and a black half collar on the back of its neck. The tails are different too: a Mourning Dove’s is long and pointed, and a Collared-Dove’s is broad and square.

If any pigeon could ever win someone over, it would be the kererū. These monsters reach about 20 inches long, with shining green and purple feathers and a bright white chest.

On our New Zealand expedition, they kept popping up again and again, all the way to our last island. One morning I spotted a large bird high in the trees, went straight into mystery-solving mode, and finally found the right angle. Kererū. Again. New Zealand somehow made a pigeon so big and colorful that I kept forgetting I was looking at a pigeon.

New Zealanders love them, too. The kererū was voted Bird of the Year in 2018. Since the moa disappeared, it’s the only native bird big enough to swallow the largest forest fruits and spread their seeds.

Sometimes the bird that keeps fooling you is a pigeon.

Back home, the Rock Pigeon is the one most people ignore. Take a closer look anyway. Its neck flashes green and purple in the sun, and it has followed people to every inhabited continent.

We’ve also learned the hard way what happens when we take pigeons for granted. The Passenger Pigeon was once the most abundant bird in North America, numbering in the billions. Hunting and lost forests wiped it out. The last one, a bird named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Its loss helped wake people up. The Lacey Act of 1900, one of the first U.S. laws to protect wildlife, passed while the Passenger Pigeon was disappearing, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act followed in 1918. Both still help protect birds today.

I once met a girl who told me pigeons were her favorite kind of bird. Her reason? No one loves them, so she felt like someone had to be their fan and show them some love.

This week, be that fan. Find a dove or pigeon and give it a real look: the tail, the neck, the way it takes off. Sometimes the birds no one loves have the best stories.