The Common Wood Pigeon (Columba palumbus) is Sweden's largest and most widespread pigeon, a bulky blue-grey bird with a pinkish-brown breast, white patches on the sides of the neck, and broad white wing bars that flash conspicuously in flight. Juveniles lack the white neck patches entirely, and a bird flushed from cover often gives itself away first with a loud clatter of wings. At 38-44 cm long and weighing 450-600 g, it is unmistakable once seen well, and its display flight, a steep climb followed by a stiff-winged glide back down, is a familiar sight over parks and woodland edges.
The deep, cooing song, a five-syllable phrase often written as "hoo-hroo hroo-hroo-hoo", carries far on still spring mornings and is one of the most recognisable sounds of Swedish parks and forest edges. Common Wood Pigeons pair for life and breed from April through the summer, sometimes rearing up to five broods in a good year; the nest is a flimsy platform of twigs, holding just two white eggs incubated for 15-19 days and fed on nutrient-rich crop milk. Diet is mostly plant material, seeds, clover, farm crops such as rapeseed and grain, and in autumn beech mast and acorns, supplemented by occasional snails and worms. Found throughout Sweden except the bare mountains, the population of 500,000-900,000 pairs has grown strongly as the species has adapted to towns and gardens. Many Swedish birds are partial migrants moving to Western Europe for winter, and the autumn passage can be immense: a single-day record of 317,300 birds was counted at Falsterbo on 19 October 2022.
Read about this species in Swedish →