The Stock Dove (Columba oenas) is a small, evenly blue-grey pigeon that lacks the bold white wing markings of the more familiar Wood Pigeon, and is a shyer, far more easily overlooked bird. It measures roughly 28–32 cm in length, has a wingspan of about 60–66 cm and weighs 230–350 grams, making it noticeably smaller and neater than its common relative. The neck shows a subtle reddish-purple sheen with a faint green gloss, the folded wing carries two short, incomplete black bars, and the tail has a dark terminal band; the eye is dark and the bill pale with a reddish base. In flight the wings look dark-edged and the bird appears compact — and critically, it shows no white at all, the clearest way to separate it from the Wood Pigeon.
Its call is a dull, two-syllable, somewhat creaking coo rendered "oo-roo-ooh," with stress on the first syllable, repeated monotonously and sounding noticeably darker and more muffled than the fuller cooing of the Wood Pigeon; it is heard mainly in spring and early summer. The Stock Dove is a hole-nester that cannot excavate its own cavity, relying instead on old Black Woodpecker holes or large nest boxes in mature, hollow-treed woodland — old deciduous and beech forest, parks and estate avenues in southern and central Sweden, where the population of 10,000–30,000 pairs has been increasing. It lays a clutch of just two eggs, and as with other pigeons both parents feed the young on nutritious crop milk, sometimes managing several broods in a season. Feeding mainly on seeds, beechmast and grain gleaned from the ground, it is a short-distance migrant that leaves Sweden in autumn and returns as early as March.
Read about this species in Swedish →