European Turtle Dove

About the European Turtle Dove

The European turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) is a threatened or vulnerable member of the bird family Columbidae, the doves and pigeons. It breeds over a wide area of the south western Palearctic including north Africa but migrates to northern sub-Saharan Africa in winter.

The European turtle dove was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba and coined the binomial name Columba turtur. The specific epithet turtur is the Latin word for a turtle dove. Linnaeus gave the locality as "India". This was an error, and the type locality has been designated as England. The species is now placed in the genus Streptopelia that was introduced in 1855 by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte.

Four subspecies are recognised: S. t. turtur (Linnaeus, 1758) – Europe, Madeira and the Canary Islands to western Siberia S. t. arenicola (Hartert, 1894) – Northwest Africa to Iran and western China S. t. hoggara (Geyr von Schweppenburg, 1916) – Air Massif and Hoggar Mountains (southern Sahara)

S. t. rufescens (Brehm, CL, 1845) – Egypt and northern Sudan... Wikipedia →