There are many symbols of peace, but most of them such as the inverted crows-foot of the anti-nuclear movement have negative connotations associated with them. In 1949 Pablo Picasso designed a lithograph of a white dove as an emblem for the International Peace Conference in Paris. Because most people perceive doves and pigeons as peaceful and gentle-natured birds, in keeping with their soft and neat appearance, it has since universally been accepted as the symbol of peace.
But observant field sportspeople know that doves and pigeons can at times be quarrelsome and highly aggressive towards each other. Technically, there’s no difference between the smaller and more delicate doves and the more robust pigeons, except their size. Belonging to the family Columbidae, they are collectively referred to as columbids and have several unique features. They are the only birds able to drink water by sucking it up without tilting their heads up and they feed their chicks with milk formed in their crops, which is sucked from the parent’s throats. Although they make delightful sounds, columbids never sing. The song of birds and their calls are not the same thing. Birds learn to sing from their parents or from other sounds or other birds, which they imitate. The cooing-sounds that doves and pigeons make are calls and aren’t learnt, but genetically imprinted. When two species interbreed, the cooing is a mixture of the two calls.
With few exceptions columbids are not very colourful birds, but by no means unattractive. The extinct Dodo was the pigeon-heavyweight of the world and maybe one of the ugliest. It lacked the beautiful compact sleekness of a pigeon. The largest living pigeon today is the beautiful goose-sized crowned pigeon of New Guinea. South Africa’s species are much smaller and undoubtedly the most beautiful of them is the colourful parrot-like green pigeon of the more forested northern and eastern regions of SA. Unlike other pigeons, its call is not a cooing sound, but a pleasant series of fluting whistles ending in three clicking notes. It feeds almost exclusively on fruit such as wild figs which they eat while hanging upside-down. Second place on the beauty list would be heavily contested, but it could arguably go to the smallest – the male Namaqua dove. Although widespread and more at home in the dry North West, it differs from all our other species by having a long, pointed tail and whereas the sexes in most other species look alike, the dull-coloured Namaqua female is quite different from the striking male, with his black face and breast, metallic green spots and colourful beak.
We have 13 indigenous columbid species in SA, but some look so alike they can hardly be distinguished in the field, each species can however be identified by its call. Quite a few species such as the Delegorgue’s pigeon, the bluespotted dove, the cinnamon dove and even the tambourine doves, have such a limited distribution or are so scarce or elusive that they are seldom seen. The rock pigeon and the red-eyed dove, on the other hand, have through their widespread super-abundance not only become a serious agricultural nuisance, but the cause of environmental damage.
A prolific survivor
The red-eyed turtle dove is today the most numerous wild dove in the country, but it was not always the case. In former times red-eyed doves had a limited distribution in the eastern forested and woodland parts of SA. They are forest-roosting doves that feed in adjacent open country and where I grew up near Pretoria I never knew them. Back then laughing doves and cape turtle doves were the most common, but not anymore. The 10th edition of Roberts’ Birds indicates that the red-eyed doves were considered absent from more than half the country in 1993 and didn’t occur anywhere near the Northern Cape. However, two years later in 1995 I found them to be the most dominant doves along the lower Orange River beyond Onseepkans, west of the Augrabies Falls. I’ll be surprised if there’s a place in the country that they’ve not yet invaded.
Prolific adaptation
The reason for this population explosion is clear. By turning all our larger towns and cities into mini-forests, we have created ideal conditions for them to roost and breed. With no fixed breeding season, they breed right through the year taking only a month from egg-laying until the youngsters fly. With a year-round cultivation of grain within flying distance from their roosts, we’ve also created vast food resources for them. The scenario with the rock pigeon is very similar. They were originally confined to mountainous regions where they roosted and nested on cliffs or in caves, but they have adapted marvelously to all the high-rise buildings and other man-made constructions that make up a modern city. They even utilise abandoned mine shafts and dumps and breed on the sheer walls of Kimberley’s Big Hole. Nests are constructed using sticks and twigs, but in the business centres of large cities such as Johannesburg and Pretoria, where suitable twigs are scarce, they often use wire and nails from construction sites to build their nests. As an adaptation to this hard nesting material it was found that their eggshells here were almost twice as thick as those in rural areas.
From the concrete cliffs were they breed, they fly out in huge flocks each morning to raid crops up to 60km beyond the city limits. Because of the damage they do, people often attempted to control them with chemicals, but at the same time kill most of the raptors that used to keep their numbers down and which were once plentiful in and around our cities. Doves and pigeons are fast fliers and only the large falcons and a few sparrowhawk species are dove specialists that can regularly catch them. I often investigated serious bird poisonings around cities and on one such occasion found among the hundreds of dead doves and pigeons, not only many guinea fowl, francolin, crows, herons and several owls (which catch many sleeping doves at night) but also five dead Ovambo sparrowhawks, which are dove and pigeon specialists. It was obviously a breeding pair and their three youngsters and I sat down to calculate the effect the dead sparrowhawks could have had on the dove and pigeon population during the next five years. If only two chicks of their normal three had survived each year, their descendants would in five years have multiplied to 134. It doesn’t sound like much, but if each of them caught a dove every day they could theoretically have eliminated 70 000 doves and pigeons during that period. It must be clear that the elimination of hundreds of owls, falcon and sparrowhawk that once lived in and around our cities, must have played a major role creating the problem with which we are now stuck.
By using poison, we only succeed in compounding the problem. The best and most environmentally acceptable way to control red-eyed doves and rock pigeons is undoubtedly to hunt them, although without raptors we’d never make a dent in their number. Many field sportspeople are wingshooters who hunt with shotguns and pigeons and doves are probably their most popular quarry. Although hunting fast-flying rock pigeons is a challenge, the cost of shotgun cartridges is over R2 each and with a kill rate of only three to four birds per 10 shots, it’s quite expensive. As a handgun hunter I preferred to hunt them with a scoped and silenced .22 target pistol. My 11-year-old grandson practically grew up hunting doves with a pistol and we considered less than nine birds per 10 shots as poor. We seldom wounded birds and they weren’t full of shot pellets and their filleted breast made excellent eating. – Contact Abré J Steyn on 083 235 4822 or e-mail [email protected]. Skype name: abrejsteyn
