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Equal time: the Bird Spots YOU

Just to even things up, here’s what it feels like to be BIRD-WATCHED:

(Photo E.Shock)

This is “Hoover” the semi-tame wild African collared dove who inhabits our neighborhood, wondering why we don’t have a handful of peanuts NOW.

To indulge in a moment of natural history, notice how the eye is set in a slightly pinched or narrow part of the bird’s head.  This enables both forward and rear vision, in addition to panoramic side-vision.  This eye placement is typical of prey animals (the pursued) rather than predators (the pursuer), whose eyes tend to be placed for superior forward vision.  Except for the beak (!), a dove’s head shape is very much like a rabbit’s.  Without the big ears, of course, which would definitely be an aerodynamic liability.

For other Three Star Owl posts featuring Hoover, click here.

Posted by Allison on Apr 7th 2010 | Filed in birds,close in,Hoover the Dove,natural history,spot the bird,yard list | Comments (2)

Two coatis hit the road…

coatitails…but only one came back.

Thanks to everybody who came by Three Star Owl at Wings Over Willcox — the show was a very good one for “the owl”.  Cranes were seen, friends were met and re-met, many clay pieces found good new homes.  And thanks also to the organizers of the Festival, who have a lot of things on their plate: birders to marshall and haul, tables and chairs to account for, vendors to wrangle, and birds to find, just to mention a few of their duties.hoovs

And, thanks to Hoover, the African Collared Dove, who once again saw me off from Scottsdale.

An excellent start to the New Year!

(Above, the tails of smoke-fired coatis rising out of bubblepak in a box in the back of the truck, awaiting transport; below, Hoover in the garage, supervising the loading of the truck.  Photos A.Shock)

Posted by Allison on Jan 18th 2010 | Filed in art/clay,birds,effigy vessels,Events,Hoover the Dove,three star owl | Comments (3)

Festival of Desert Doves: African Collared Dove

The desert suburbs of Phoenix are Columbid-rich, that is, there are many species of doves and pigeons.  Yesterday I was putting out seed in a neighbor’s gravel drive just before sunset.  The area is quite open, and at that time of day it fills with fat, free-loading doves and pigeons who are used to being fed there and then: after only a minute, there were 30 birds chowing down, their heads bobbing up and down rapidly like sewing machine needles, almost all of them Columbids.  I counted six species both native and exotic — all the species regularly seen in our neighborhood and most seen regularly in the Phoenix area at this time of year: Mourning dove, White-winged dove, Inca dove, Eurasian Collared Dove, African Collared dove, and Rock Pigeon.

There was only one African Collared dove (Streptopelia roseogrisea).  This species, like its close relative the now-abundant Eurasian Collared dove, is an exotic.  But unlike the ECDO, which was introduced in one place and then spread itself across the nation, the African Collared dove (or Ringed Turtle dove) was originally released very close to here but hasn’t spread widely, even in the Phoenix area.

The plumage of the two exotic doves are somewhat similar: both are beige and have a black crescent on their neck.  They can be hard to tell apart, until you get the hang of it.  The African is a smaller, paler dove, almost white, with a gentle two-note call that sounds like the chorus from the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”: “Woo-HOOooo!”  The larger Eurasian is slightly darker in plumage and has a hoarse three-note call with the emphasis on the middle note: “hoo-HOO-hoo” which it utters incessantly.

Our neighborhood hosts a small population of the daintier African Collared dove, and one of them spends most of its time mooching in our yard and our neighbor’s yard.  Because of its habit of snarfing up seed rapidly, packing it into its crop and then flying off to digest at leisure, we’ve named it Hoover, like the vacuum cleaner. (Hoover used to have a mate, Eureka, but she’s not around these days).  These birds are quite “sweet”: by that I mean they are not very afraid of people, unlike the other doves which all have a proper wariness towards humans.  They will fly right down and land on the ground at your feet if they think seed is to be had.  Not surprisingly given these behavior traits, there has been debate among ornithologists as to how domesticated this species (or variety) of dove is, but currently it’s enjoying full species status.

(Images of ACDOs: sketchbook pencil sketch and photo, A.Shock.)

Posted by Allison on Jun 14th 2009 | Filed in art/clay,birds,close in,drawn in,Hoover the Dove,natural history,yard list | Comments (2)

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