Американский поголуб (Zenaida macroura)

North American bird in the family Columbidae

the Native American author of the same name

The mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) is a member of the dove family, Columbidae. The bird is also known as the American mourning dove, the rain dove, the chueybird, colloquially as the turtle dove, and it was once known as the Carolina pigeon and Carolina turtledove. It is one of the most abundant and widespread North American birds and a popular gamebird, with more than 20 million birds (up to 70 million in some years) shot annually in the U. S., both for sport and meat. Its ability to sustain its population under such pressure is due to its prolific breeding; in warm areas, one pair may raise up to six broods of two young each in a single year. The wings make an unusual whistling sound upon take off and landing, a form of sonation. The bird is a strong flier, capable of speeds up to
Mourning doves are light gray and brown and generally muted in color. Males and females are similar in appearance. The species is generally monogamous, with two squabs (young) per brood. Both parents incubate and care for the young. Mourning doves eat almost exclusively seeds, but the young are fed crop milk by their parents.

In 1731, the English naturalist Mark Catesby described and illustrated the passenger pigeon and the mourning dove on successive pages of his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. For the passenger pigeon he used the common name "Pigeon of passage" and the scientific Latin Palumbus migratorius; for the mourning dove he used "Turtle of Carolina" and Turtur carolinensis. In 1743, the naturalist George Edwards included the mourning dove with the English name "long tail'd dove" and the Latin name Columba macroura in his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. Edwards's pictures of the male and female doves were drawn from live birds that had been shipped to England from the West Indies. In 1758, when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he conflated the two species. He used the Latin name Columba macroura introduced by Edwards as the binomial name but included a description mainly based on Catesby. He cited Edwards's description of the mourning dove and Catesby's description of the passenger pigeon. Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae again in 1766 for the twelfth edition. He dropped Columba macroura and instead coined Columba migratoria for the passenger pigeon, Columba cariolensis for the mourning dove and Columba marginata for Edwards's mourning dove. This was accepted by the ICZN, which used its plenary powers to designate the species for the respective names in 1955. The mourning dove is now placed in the genus Zenaida, introduced in 1838 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, commemorating his wife Zénaïde. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek makros meaning "long" and ouros meaning " tailed". The mourning dove is closely related to the eared dove (Zenaida auriculata) and the Socorro dove (Zenaida graysoni). Some authorities consider them a superspecies, and the three birds are sometimes classified in the separate genus Zenaidura, It has recently invaded the Florida Keys. The "mourning" part of its common name comes from its doleful call. The mourning dove was thought to be the passenger pigeon's closest living relative on morphological grounds until genetic analysis showed Patagioenas pigeons are more closely related. The mourning dove was even suggested to belong to the same genus, Ectopistes, and was listed by some authors as E. carolinensis. The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s.

The mourning dove is a medium sized, slender dove approximately in length. Mourning doves weigh , usually closer to The mourning dove has a wingspan of 37–45 cm. The elliptical wings are broad, and the head is rounded. Its tail is long and tapered ("macroura" comes from the Greek words for "large" and "tail"). Mourning doves have perching feet, with three toes forward and one reversed. The legs are short and reddish colored. The beak is short and dark, usually a brown black hue. All five subspecies of the mourning dove look similar and are not easily distinguishable. The species is resident throughout the Greater Antilles, most of Mexico, the Continental United States, southern Canada, and the Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda. Much of the Canadian prairie sees these birds in summer only, and southern Central America sees them in winter only. The species is a vagrant in northern Canada, Alaska, and South America. It has been spotted as an accidental at least seven times in the Western Palearctic with records from the British Isles (5), the Azores (1) and Iceland (1). In 1963, the mourning dove was introduced to Hawaii, and in 1998 there was still a small population in North Kona. The mourning dove also appeared on Socorro Island, off the western coast of Mexico, in 1988, sixteen years after the Socorro dove was extirpated from that island. The mourning dove occupies a wide variety of open and semi open habitats, such as urban areas, farms, prairie, grassland, and lightly wooded areas. It avoids swamps and thick forest.

Courtship begins with a noisy flight by the male, followed by a graceful, circular glide with outstretched wings and head down. After landing, the male will approach the female with a puffed out breast, bobbing head, and loud calls. Mated pairs will often preen each other's feathers. The nest is constructed of twigs, conifer needles, or grass blades, and is of flimsy construction. Most nests are in trees, both deciduous and coniferous. Sometimes, they can be found in shrubs, vines, or on artificial constructs like buildings, The eggs are white, , long, wide, at laying (5–6% of female body mass). Both sexes incubate, the male from morning to afternoon, and the female the rest of the day and at night. Mourning doves are devoted parents; nests are very rarely left unattended by the adults. Mourning doves generally eat enough to fill their crops and then fly away to digest while resting. They often swallow grit such as fine gravel or sand to assist with digestion. The species usually forages on the ground, walking but not hopping. Mourning doves can be afflicted with several different diseases and parasites, including tapeworms, nematodes, mites, and lice. The mouth dwelling parasite Trichomonas gallinae is particularly severe. While a mourning dove will sometimes host it without symptoms, it will often cause yellowish growth in the mouth and esophagus that will eventually starve the host to death. Avian pox is a common, insect vectored disease.

The number of individual mourning doves was estimated to be approximately 475 million in 1994, and to have shown a small increase since. However, more recent reporting cautions that mourning doves are in decline in the western United States, and susceptible everywhere in the country due to lead poisoning as they eat spent shot leftover in hunting fields. In some cases, the fields are specifically planted with a favored seed plant to lure them to those sites.

A Huron/Wyandot legend tells of a maiden named Ayu'ra (modernly spelled Iohara) who used to care for the bird, who came to love her a great deal. One day, she became sick and died. As her spirit traveled across the land to the entrance to the Underworld, all the doves followed her and tried to gain entrance into the Underworld alongside her. Sky Woman, the deity who guards this door, refused them entry, eventually creating smoke to blind them and take Ayu'ra's spirit away without their knowledge. The smoke stained their feathers gray and they have been in mourning for the maiden's loss ever since. The logic behind the story is a play on words—the sound many Native Americans attributed to the bird was "howe howe," and this is also the sound the Iroquoian peoples used to chant over the dead at funerary events. The eastern mourning dove (Z. m. carolinensis) is Wisconsin's official symbol of peace. The bird is also Michigan's state bird of peace. The mourning dove appears as the Carolina turtle dove on plate 286 of Audubon's Birds of America. Lorine Niedecker, and Charles Wright. The mourning dove is mentioned on the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis track, "Wood Dove", for the "For the Birds: The Birdsong Project", Vol. 2. The mourning dove is also mentioned in other musical tracks, including Ray Charles' rendition of the popular blues song "Careless Love" and "I Love You, I Love You (I Will Never Let You Go)".