Mourning Dove Life Cycle
According to the wild bird watching website mourning doves in their first year of life have a mortality rate of up to 75 percent while adult mourning doves have a mortality rate of up to 60 percent.
Mourning dove life cycle. The mourning dove is a medium sized slender dove approximately 31 cm 12 in in length. It swallows fine gravel to help it digest hard seeds. Mourning doves perch on telephone wires and forage for seeds on the ground. Their soft drawn out calls sound like laments.
The elliptical wings are broad and the head is rounded. Their flight is fast and bullet straight. It is a frequent visitor to bird feeders. While they are considered wild birds they are sometimes kept as aviary.
It feeds in pairs or flocks. Their average lifespan is 1 5 years. When taking off their wings make a sharp whistling or whinnying. Their major threats are hunting in states where hunting of mourning doves is legal.
The male collects materials for the nest and the female weaves the materials into a platform of grass pine needles and twigs in a tree or shrub. Their maximum lifespan in the wild is about 19 3 years. A graceful slender tailed small headed dove that s common across the continent. In those areas these doves tend to perish sooner.
Mourning doves weigh 112 170 g 4 0 6 0 oz usually closer to 128 g 4 5 oz. 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. In spite of being one of the most frequently hunted birds in the united states large populations of doves thrive across the country. Mourning doves are the most frequently hunted species in north america.