Red Turtle Dove

About the Red Turtle Dove

The red collared dove (Streptopelia tranquebarica), also known as the red turtle dove, is a small pigeon which is a resident breeding bird in the tropics of Asia. The male has a blue-grey head and a red-brown body. The female is much plainer, with pale brown plumage similar to that of the larger Eurasian collared dove.

The red collared dove was formally described by the French naturalist Johann Hermann in 1804 and given the binomial name Columba tranquebarica. The specific epithet is from the town Tranquebar, now Tharangambadi, on the Coromandel Coast in southern India. The red turtle dove is now placed in the genus Streptopelia that was introduced in 1855 by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. The genus name is from the Ancient Greek streptos meaning "collar" and peleia meaning "dove".

Two subspecies are recognised: S. t. humilis (Temminck, 1824) – eastern Nepal, northeastern India and northeastern Tibet to northern China and the Philippines S. t. tranquebarica (Hermann, 1804) – Pakistan, peninsular India, western Nepal The red collared dove is a relatively small species, with a length of 20.5–23 cm (8.1–9.1 in) and a weight of around... Wikipedia →