Eurasian Collared Dove

A pale, medium-sized dove, 30 to 32 cm (about 12 in) long and around 200 g (7 oz): smaller than a Woodpigeon.¹ It is a soft sandy grey-buff, pinkish on the head and breast in good light, with a narrow black half-collar on the back of the neck, edged with white.²

Close up, the eye is deep red inside a thin greyish-white ring, the bill is black and the legs are dark red. The wingtips are dark, and in flight the outer wing looks darker than the grey middle of the wing. From below, the long, square-ended tail is black at the base and broadly white at the tip, which shows best as a bird lands or in the male's display flight.

Adults weighed by BTO ringers average 205 g (about 7 oz).³ The RSPB gives a wingspan of about 51 cm (20 in).¹

Males and females look alike. Females tend to be a little duller and less pink, with greyish rather than white edges to the collar, but the difference overlaps and is hard to see. Males are a little heavier on average: 208 g against 202 g in BTO's samples.³

Young birds have pale reddish to buff edges to their feathers, which gives them a scaly look, and a brown eye. They have no complete black collar until they are about three months old.

Pigeons and doves are one family, and the two names mark no scientific difference.⁴ Among them, the Collared Dove is the pale one with a thin black half-collar.

A Woodpigeon is bigger and greyer, with a pink breast, a white neck patch and white bands across the wings. A feral pigeon, the same species as the wild Rock Dove, is chunkier and shorter-tailed, typically grey with bold black wing bars and a shiny neck patch instead of a collar. The Stock Dove is grey with a pink breast and a shiny neck patch. The Turtle Dove, a summer visitor, is smaller and darker, with a mottled chestnut-and-black back and a black-and-white patch on the neck.⁵

In North America it lives alongside the Mourning Dove, which is smaller and slimmer, with a pointed tail and no black collar.⁶ See Eurasian Collared-Dove vs Mourning Dove for all the differences. Escaped domestic Barbary Doves (Ringed Turtle-Doves) look very like Collared Doves, but they are white under the base of the tail where a Collared Dove is grey, and show less contrast on the wings in flight. Hybrids between the two have been reported in the wild.²

The song is the soft, three-note coo heard from roofs, wires and TV aerials, with the stress on the middle note: Birds of the World writes it "hoo-HOOOO-hoo". A male usually repeats it 3 to 12 times from a high perch, and it is thought to hold his territory and attract a mate. It can be heard in any month, most of all at the height of the breeding season, when males sometimes coo in the middle of the night.

Each phrase lasts a second or so. The Woodpigeon's song, easily mixed up with it, is a deep, slightly muffled phrase of five notes; the Collared Dove's is three less muffled notes, just over a second long, with the second higher.⁷ See the Woodpigeon's call for the two side by side.

When excited or alarmed, and especially just before landing, both sexes give a nasal "hwaah". At the nest a pair call to each other with a lower, slower version of the coo. See the Collared Dove's call and song for more recordings, spectrograms and what the research has found.

Almost anywhere people live, all year round. In the 2007-11 Bird Atlas Collared Doves were found in 84% of the UK's 10-km squares in the breeding season, missing only from high ground such as the Scottish Highlands and from remote bogs, and they are most numerous in eastern England. They are commonest in towns and villages.³ Look in gardens, parks and farmyards, wherever there is seed or grain to eat and trees, buildings or wires to perch on; they avoid forest and the most built-up city centres.²

Look for a pale dove on a roof, chimney pot or wire, listen for the three-note coo, and watch for the white-tipped tail as one lands.

The Collared Dove is a newcomer. Its original home was probably India and nearby parts of Asia, and until the early 20th century it lived in Europe only in the Balkans and Turkey. From 1912 it began to spread north from the former Yugoslavia, then from the 1930s it swept north-west across Europe, colonising around 2.5 million km² (about 965,000 sq miles) in some 40 years: Hungary in 1932, Germany in 1946, the Netherlands in 1947, France in 1950. Why is not known. Farming and towns created the open country it likes, and the sudden start and the steady direction have led the authors of Birds of the World to suggest that a genetic change may have set it off.²

In Britain the first birds were recorded in Norfolk in 1955, when just four were known.³ They reached Ireland in 1959.² By 1964 there were nearly 19,000 at about 500 sites in Britain and Ireland⁸, and BTO puts the population, conservatively, at 15,000 to 25,000 pairs by 1970.³

Collared Doves are a recent arrival in North America too. Most are thought to trace back to the Bahamas, where in December 1974 a breeder in Nassau lost some birds in a burglary and then released the rest, no more than 50 in all.⁹ From there they probably reached Florida, where they were first identified in 1986, and spread mainly north-west in long jumps: South Dakota, about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) from Florida, had its first in 1996, the same year as New Jersey, about 1,800 km (1,100 miles) away. Other releases helped. They now live across most of the United States and southern Canada, though they are still scarce in the north-east, and number about 8.7 million in the two countries.²

Scientists studying its spread in North America describe it as an invasive species.¹⁰ So far there is no evidence that it has harmed native doves², and in Florida in winter four other dove species were more numerous where Collared Doves were more numerous.¹¹ See how to tell it from a Mourning Dove.

No. In Britain and Ireland Collared Doves are resident, with no regular migration. Young birds wander, mostly less than 300 km (186 miles) from where they hatched, and a few much further. The longest move on record within Britain and Ireland is 923 km (574 miles), from North Ronaldsay in Orkney to Margate in Kent.¹² Ringing shows that some cross the sea: there have been 54 reports of foreign-ringed birds in Britain and Ireland, 33 of them from Belgium, and 12 of birds ringed in Britain and Ireland found abroad.

Mostly seeds and grain, such as wheat, barley, oats and maize, and the seeds of weeds, with buds, shoots and some berries. Now and then they take small insects, aphids or tiny snails. They feed mostly on the ground, walking with bobbing heads, and gather where grain is spilled, around farmyards, grain stores and animal feed: a British study found their numbers near grain mills rose and fell with how much grain was within reach.²

BTO notes that Collared Doves make use of seed put out in gardens.³ Trichomonosis has been found in Collared Doves.² If you feed birds in the UK, follow the RSPB's current advice to slow the spread of diseases such as this: from 1 May to 31 October pause seeds and peanuts, putting out only small amounts of mealworms, fat balls or suet; use hanging feeders rather than flat surfaces such as bird tables, trays and window feeders; clean feeders every week; and put out fresh water every day.¹³

In North America, All About Birds notes that they come readily to millet and other seed scattered on the ground or on platform feeders.⁶ Project FeederWatch also lists cracked corn, sunflower seed and oats for them.¹⁴

Collared Doves have a long season. In Britain they breed mainly from March to October², and BTO notes they can nest in any month when the weather is mild.³ The male shows the female possible sites, calling at each, and brings her twigs, stems and grass; she builds a flimsy platform, usually in a tree or tall hedge near houses, sometimes on a building.

There are almost always 2 white eggs. Both parents incubate them for 16 to 17 days, the female through the night and the male for about eight hours from early morning, and the chicks leave the nest at 17 to 19 days. The parents feed them at first on "crop milk", a cheesy food made in the crop, then on seeds as well.

A pair often lays again while still feeding the last brood. BTO gives 1 to 2 broods a year as typical, but in an Oxfordshire study pairs averaged 3.8 clutches a year, and some raised up to five broods in a season.²

A male proclaims his territory from a high perch, then launches into his display flight: he climbs steeply, clapping his wings, and glides down, often in a spiral, with his tail spread, usually calling "hwaah".² A 2008 study found the display uses close to the bird's maximum muscle power yet very little energy overall, which may make it a hard-to-fake sign of fitness.¹⁵

Near the nest pairs can be aggressive. They chase off other Collared Doves and crows and fight with blows of the wing, and a nesting bird may even strike a person with its wing. Outside the breeding season they gather at good feeding places in flocks, sometimes several hundred strong, and roost together, more so in cold weather; some fly into towns to roost in street and garden trees. On the ground they walk with a bobbing head, and after landing they flick the tail up, then slowly lower it.

A Collared Dove that survives to breed typically lives about 3 years, and nearly two in three adults (64%) survive from one year to the next.³

Some live much longer. The oldest on the BTO's ringing list was ringed at Margate Beach, Kent, in January 1969 and found there, injured, in April 1984, 15 years 3 months later.¹⁶ The European longevity list's oldest is a Dutch bird with an estimated age of 22 years 2 months.¹⁷ North America's record is 9 years 3 months: a bird banded in South Carolina in 2002 and caught by a cat in 2011.¹⁸

In Europe most eggs that fail are lost to predators, chiefly crows and their relatives; in a Manchester study only 29% of eggs led to fledged young. Predators recorded in Britain include a bird of prey, foxes, stoats and domestic cats, and cats appear to be a common predator of adults. Disease matters too: trichomonosis has been reported in Collared Doves in Britain.²

The Collared Dove is on the UK Green List and of Least Concern worldwide. There are about 810,000 pairs in the UK (2016).

After its spectacular spread, it is now declining. The Breeding Bird Survey puts the UK fall at 45% from a peak in 2005, 30% of it in the decade to 2024, and a fall of 9% between 2024 and 2025. England's numbers fell 34% between 1995 and 2024, while Northern Ireland's nearly doubled (up 96% between 1997 and 2024).¹⁹

The cause is not settled. The survey's 2025 report, and the introduction to BTO's species account, say the decline is likely to be linked to the spread of trichomonosis. Another passage of the same account says the 2006 outbreak is not thought to be the main cause of the downturn. It suggests the earlier slowing of the increase may be due to rising numbers of grey squirrels, which have been linked to nests failing at the egg stage, or to the birds nearing the limit of their niche.³

Like all wild birds, Collared Doves and their nests while in use or being built are protected by law in Great Britain²⁰ and Northern Ireland.²¹ Unlike the Woodpigeon and the feral pigeon, the Collared Dove is not among the species on the 2026 general licences that let authorised people kill or take certain birds to prevent serious damage, in England²², Wales²³, Scotland²⁴ or Northern Ireland.²⁵

In the United States, as a non-native bird, it is not protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act²⁶, and it is hunted in several states.