A wife should be as humble as a lamb, busy as a bee, as beautiful as a bird of paradise and faithful as a turtle dove.

A Russian Proverb

Turtle Dove

The Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur), also known as European Turtle Dove is a member of the bird family Columbidae, which includes the doves and pigeons.

It is a migratory species with a southern Palearctic range, including Turkey and north Africa, though it is rare in northern Scandinavia and Russia; it winters in southern Africa.

The Turtle Dove is smaller and slighter in build than other doves. Turtle Dove populations in Europe has fallen by 62% in recent times. This is partly because changed farming practices mean that the weed seeds and shoots on which it feeds, especially Fumitory, are scarcer, and partly due to shooting of birds during migration in Mediterranean countries.

The mature bird has the head, neck, flanks, and rump blue grey, and the wings cinnamon, mottled with black. The breast is vinaceous, the abdomen and under tail coverts are white. The bill is black, the legs and eye rims are red. The black and white patch on the side of the neck is absent in the browner and duller juvenile bird, which also has the legs brown.

The Turtle Dove, one of the latest migrants, rarely appears in Northern Europe before the end of April, returning south again in September, but is often seen in April.

It is a bird of open rather than dense woodlands, and frequently feeds on the ground. It will occasionally nest in large gardens, but is usually extremely timid, probably due to the heavy hunting pressure it faces on migration. The flight is often described as arrowy, but is not remarkably swift.