Found a single Eurasian Collared-dove in Marietta today. Bird was on a wire one half block south of the American Legion.
This was a typical bird. Larger than Mourning Dove, medium gray all over, with a white bottom to the square tail and black outer tail feathers on the bottom side of the tail. When identifying these birds you need to see all of these features and others shown in the field guides to avoid confusion with Ringed Turtle Doves. Someone said the other day that RTDs are always white. That is not true. We have seen an RTD that was not the bright white bird that we have observed in captivity. While this bird was definately lighter that the typical ECD it was not white at all. Also it does not make sense to us to differentiate between birds likely to be seen in the larger metro areas and the birds that are starting to slowly populate all the counties in western Minnesota. Birds fly. That is the part that makes this so interesting. You never know where a species will show up next. A larger concern will be hybrids. The latest issue of North American Birds has a photograph of a hybrid Mourning/Eurasian Collared-dove from Memphis,Tennessee. While this particular photograph is hard to get a great idea of all the id marks it is important to remember that hybrids can draw just about any of their traits from either parent. Anyone know if hunters can shoot ECDs also? And also if there is not a season on ECDs can we charge a hunter who shoots a hybrid or a ECD with breaking the law? You know the DNR enforcement officers won't do anything about this as they won't know the ID marks. Dennis and Barbara Martin dbmar...@skypoint.com