The European Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) is a neat, pointed-tailed dove with a beautifully scaled back, now nearly extinct as a Swedish breeding bird and classed as globally threatened. It measures 26-28 cm in length, has a wingspan of about 47-53 cm and weighs 130-180 grams, noticeably smaller and slimmer than the Collared Dove. The back and wing coverts are warm rust-brown with black scaling, giving a pearl-scaled impression, the head and nape blue-grey, with a small black-and-white streaked patch on the side of the neck and a pink flush on the breast. The tail is fairly short and rounded, with distinct white edges and corners visible when spread, and its flight is fast and somewhat jerky, unlike the Collared Dove's.
Its call is a soft, pleasant, rolling purr, "turrr-turrr", one of summer's most characteristic and evocative sounds over open farmland. In Sweden it is now a very rare breeding bird, its small population confined mainly to Öland and Gotland and sharply declining, red-listed as threatened; the collapse mirrors a dramatic decline across Europe, driven by intensified agriculture reducing the supply of wild seed plants, heavy hunting during migration in southern Europe, and drought and desertification in its Sahel wintering grounds. A long-distance migrant, it winters in Africa's Sahel belt. It breeds in open, warm farmland with scrub, hedges and groves, building a sparse platform nest of twigs in a dense bush or small tree; the female lays usually 2 white eggs, shared incubation by both parents lasts about two weeks, and the chicks, initially fed on crop milk, fledge after nearly three weeks. Its diet is almost entirely seeds from wild herbs and grasses, plus some spilled grain, making it highly sensitive to intensive, weed-free farming.
Read about this species in Swedish →