The ruddy ground dove (Columbina talpacoti) is a small New World tropical dove. It is a resident breeder from Mexico south to Brazil, Peru and Paraguay, and northern Argentina, and on Trinidad and Tobago. Individual birds can sometimes be seen in the southwestern USA, from southern Texas to southernmost California, primarily during winter.
Description: It measures 12-18 centimeters in length and weighs about 35-56 grams. The male , with reddish brown feathers, dominant color on the adult’s body , in contrast to the head, bluish gray. The female is all brown. In both sexes, on the wing there are a series of black spots on the feathers. The chicks come out with traces of the plumage of each sex.
Breeding: The couple maintains a nest territory, keeping other doves close at hand. The male has a monotonous chant , of two low and fast calls, repeated continuously for several seconds. The nests are small bowls of branches and sticks, made between vines or branches, tightly closed by the branches around them. Laying of 2 eggs, hatched by the couple between 11 and 13 days. The chicks leave the nest at most 2 weeks old. The couple, sometimes two days later, already start a new litter, when the environmental conditions allow. The nests are built in low and tall trees and sometimes in banana clusters or in gutters of the houses and on the roofs.
Habitat: Adapts to artificial environments created by human action. Lives in open areas; the deforestation facilitated its expansion, especially in the areas formed to pasture or grain farming. He entered the big cities in the southeast and midwest regions of Brazil.Very aggressive with each other, although they can form groups, they compete for food and defend territories using one of the wings to strike hard at the opponent. The males are more bellicose. In disputes or when they sunbathe, lying on their side on the ground and with the wing stretched upwards, they show the large area of black feathers under the wing.
Bird watchers in the south-central part of the United States have been observing a “replacement” of this species by another pigeon, the Zenaida auriculata, also known as dove-of-band, or amargosinha eared dove . The latter species has been conquering the urban environment more and more effectively and is apparently competing with the dove, which is already less frequent than the flock pigeon in most cities in the interior of São Paulo.In any case, this friendly and even naive species is far from disappearing from the backyards of our houses and from the squares and gardens of our cities, even if they are in large buildings.
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