Colours of Wildlife: Laughing Dove
Created | Updated Jun 7, 2020
Laughing Dove
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
The Laughing Dove, Streptopelia senegalensis, is probably the commonest bird species in my home town of Polokwane. Not only that, it is also a particularly beautiful dove, with its soft, delicately pastel-shaded plumage. It is a mid-sized dove, reaching 25 cm/10" in overall length. Males and females look the same. This dove is easy to identify in South Africa: it lacks the black 'collar' of its closest relatives, and instead is adorned with a beautiful feather design on its breast and neck, of black-based feathers with forked, orange tips. When it calls, the neck and breast puffs out to display the black-and-orange pattern. Its call is a friendly, bubbling coo, for which it is named. Laughing Doves occur throughout sub-Saharan Africa, as well as on the island of Socotra, Arabia and the mid-East, and southern Asia as far as India and western China. There's a population in the Eastern Mediterranean, which might be of introduced birds, and there are also some that have been introduced to Australia (a country with many amazing doves of its own). Sometimes, this species is put in a different genus, Spilopelia, along with the Spotted Dove of Asia.
This unassuming dove owes its amazing success to its adaptability. In the wild, it inhabits mostly dry, open woodland, savannah and shrubland, and even semi-desert, but it has become a town bird now. It also occurs on farms, feeding in fields of grain but without becoming a major pest. The doves take advantage of food, water and nesting sites associated with humans. They eat mainly seeds, including those of grasses and weeds. They will catch small amounts of insects, and especially profit from the large eruptions of flying termites that happen as soon as good rains have fallen in the spring and summer. Most of their foraging happens on the ground, but they will drink the sweet nectar from flowering aloes. They drink water like other doves and pigeons, able to 'suck' it into their throats rather than having to raise their heads so the water will flow down their throats as is the case in many other birds.
In South Africa, laughing doves can breed at any time of the year, but do so mostly during the summer. Male and female form a couple for life. He displays to her by cooing while bowing his head, and by a flight where he first ascends steeply, with loud wing-clapping, and then glides down in a spiral. He may also present her with food, and the pair lovingly preen each other. The nest is a flimsy structure of thrown-together twigs, roots and leaf-stems, in a tree or shrub or often a site on a man-made structure. The male brings the materials, while the female builds the nest. She lays two eggs most of the time. Both sexes incubate, the male usually more during the day. The eggs hatch after about two weeks. The parents remove the shells from the nest, dropping them some distance away so as not to give clues to predators. The chicks, called squabs, are rather ugly, naked at first but soon developing a scruffy down. The will peck or strike with their wings at intruders. But their parents also guard them well.
Both chicks are fed at the same time. The parent opens its bill and the squabs thrust their heads into it so as to be able to get at the food, which is a unique substance called 'pigeon's milk'. This is a secretion from the crop lining which is high in proteins and fats, in fact being similar in nutritional value to mammalian milk. The chicks feed on this at first but soon also start taking food their parents have been feeding on from their crops.
Squabs leave the nest aged about 12 to 13 days. They still look very scruffy and rather awkward; they seem tame and not scared enough of humans and other potential threats. They also can't fly very well either. This is a vulnerable time for them, and they still return to the nest from time to time, and depend on their parents for food. They now must learn to find their own food, to fly, and to keep themselves safe. Once that is achieved, they're secure.
An interesting fact about the laughing dove is that it is one of the fastest flying of South African birds. The flying prowess of its relative, the Rock Dove, from which racing pigeons have been bred, is well-known.
There's actually not a fixed, biological distinction between a 'pigeon' and a 'dove'. They're all in the same family, the Columbidae, and spread over a large number of genera. The larger species are generally called 'pigeons' and the smaller ones 'doves', but there are many 'doves' that are larger than some or even most 'pigeons'. In Afrikaans, we have just a single word for them, 'duif', which corresponds to English 'dove' and German 'Taube', which refers to their 'diving' style of flight. The word 'pigeon' comes from French, derived from a Latin word that refers to the peeping of their squabs. Pigeons and doves lack gall bladders, and the ancients believed that they therefore have no bile, and thus, in line with the 'four humors' philosophy, would have sweet dispositions. Today we know they do have bile, which is secreted directly into their guts.
Laughing doves are abundant over practically their entire, very large, range, and thus not threatened.
