142 
PIGEONS 
Grande valley, where it may be found, Mr. Sennett says, by the 
peculiar note which distinguishes it from all other pigeons. 
GENUS MELOPELIA. 
319. Melopelia leucoptera (Linn.). White-winged Dove. 
Tail rounded, shorter than wing, of twelve broad, rounded feathers; 
wings pointed; bill slender and length¬ 
ened, equaling tarsus; a large bare 
space around eye. Adult male: wing 
with large white patch on coverts, 
conspicuous against black quills ; tail 
bluish gray, broadly tipped with white preceded by black, two middle 
feathers brown ; sides of head with bluish black spot next to bronzy iri¬ 
descent patch ; top of head and neck dull pinkish ; rest of upper parts 
brownish, except for bluish gray of lower back; under parts soft fawn 
color, fading to whitish. Adult female: similar but smaller and duller. 
Young: like female but still duller, feathers of upper parts tipped with 
paler and breast with rusty tinge. Length : 11.00-12.25, wing 0.30-6.80, 
tail 4.80-5.25. 
Distribution. — Resident in Lower Sonoran and Tropical zones from 
Florida and Texas to Arizona, and south through Lower California and 
Mexico to Costa Rica, Cuba, and Jamaica. Casual in Colorado. 
Nest. — A frail platform of interlaced sticks, lined with weeds, dry 
grass, and often mesquite leaf stems, placed in mesquite, walnut, willow, 
or cactus, from 6 to 30 feet from the ground. Eggs : 2, white. 
Food. — Insects, small seeds, grain, berries, mesquite beans, and cactus 
fruit. 
As the jay seems a part of the mountain forest, the horned lark 
of the prairie, and the sage thrasher inseparable from the sagebrush 
plains, so the white-winged dove belongs to the hot cactus and 
mesquite valleys of the lower Colorado, Gila, and Rio Grande. 
Though often seen perching on a giant cactus, its life is largely 
spent in the mesquite, and its plump form is so constantly seen 
through the thin mesquite foliage that it comes to seem almost like 
a fruit of the tree. Now the dove is only perching there, beside a 
water-pool, now on a branch acting as sentinel while a hungry flock 
is down in a patch of wild sunflower or the wheatfield of the 
ranclieria; but in the nesting season it has taken up its abode in 
the tree and is building its nest and rearing its young in the protec¬ 
tion of the thorny branches. 
So closely is it associated with the mesquite country that even its 
monotonous whoo-hoo'-hoo-hoo' calls up pictures of desert thorn-brush 
and ’dobe walls, over which the large, handsome bird is flying with 
white bands outspread on wings and tail. Its note is an exaggerated 
form of the coo common to the family. To make it the dove puffs 
out his throat like a pouter pigeon, emitting the curious hollow 
sound which is more suggestive of the hooting of an owl than the 
languid cooing of a dove. Vernon Bailey. 
Fig. 209. 
