Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Doves Dying in this cold.

Yes, i am. You are 100% correctamundo.

The laws of nature ARE cruel - and unforgiving.

One of those natural laws is straight out of the Bible:
2Th 3:10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

Unfortunately, the liberals have bypassed this very important rule of nature with disastrous results.

Eurasian colored doves are doing just great around here, all winter long. They've already started some courting/nesting behavior this spring, and we're still below zero nights right now.

We regularly get to 20 below for a few days here and there, and occasionally colder. So they seem to handle the cold weather just fine.

Birds obviously don't need open water to survive (pheasants for example). I always assumed they nibbled on snow, but I don't really know.

Why are your doves different than the ones here? They're not dying from the temps.

Having studied up considerable on birds over the years I believe COLD per se, does not usually kill birds, certainly not as temperate a species as mourning doves anyway. There are numerous incidents of summer birds even down to the size of hummingbirds surviving long into northern winters as far north as Alaska as long as they had a reliable supply of food.

Feathers are EXCELLENT insulation, I believe the incidence of ice forming overnight on the white-wing doves head being an illustration of that. Ice against the actual skin of the head would AFAIK quickly and fatally chill the bird, OTOH roosting birds are often covered with snow, so little heat escaping through the feathers that no snow melts to wet the bird.

Lack of FOOD however will kill most birds in a matter of just three or four days. Their metabolisms are cranked so high that they rarely freeze to death per se, what happens is they run out of the fuel in the form of body fat needed to fuel that high metabolism and body heat and burn out suddenly and quickly.

I suspect those dead doves are separated from their usual seed crop by ice and snow.

White-winged doves are a special case in that, being essentially a tropical species, their fleshy feet that enable them to climb somewhat like a parrot when feeding (I have never seen this) are especially vulnerable to freezing. If they lose too many toes they cannot walk or perch and so die of starvation. This I believe is the major factor at present limiting their spread northwards.

I have not heard the same thing about Asiatic Collared Doves.

Birdwatcher

Never mind. Birdie answered it.

The mourning doves in so. Idaho usually migrate out at the 1st hint of cold weather. we often have a cold spell right around Labor day so they disappear just as the season is getting going. On rare occasions, I've seen a couple at the bird feeder in mid winter but that's unusual. The collared doves, however, don't leave. Ever.

Doves have a very high mortality rate. Most of them only have a life span of about 18 to 24 months. Thats the reason they lay eggs and nest several times a year. They are also very poor nest builders.

You have white wings. I think these were hit by a strange phenomenon. When driving home from coyote hunting yesterday at about 23 degrees, the air was almost like a misty fog. It looked like mist hitting my windshield, but it had to be very fine sleet at that temp. I think it wss fine enough to thaw when hitting the wsrmer doves roosting and then refroze in progressively thicker layers of ice overnight, if they were not adequately protected buy thick leaves on roost tree limbs, resulting in some being unable to fly normally today.

We normally have lots of doves roost in the back yard live oaks which normally have tons of live leaf cover. A recent ice storm broke many limbs and trimming the hanging limbs has left a lot of open sky with less leaf cover. Maybe some birds used to roisting in that tree all their life know of no other place to go and sat in places more exposed to the elements than usual.

White wings originally were from sreas in south Texas or farther south. They only started showing up here 20 years ago when we had global warming.

I see a lot more White Wings here in town than I do at the Ranch, 60 miles north of here. We kill usually half Whitewings & half morning doves ate the Ranch, though.
And hunting at my buddies Ranch in Coleman, which is 60 miles south of here,we hardly ever shoot a Whitewing.
We also go on a yearly dove hunt on opening day in San Angelo, and it's all Whitewings.

Also, I've seen a couple of coveys of Blue Quail at the Ranch in the last three years. And we haven't seen them before since the late 1970's. I have not hunted them, but I'm hoping by protecting the Covey's I have seen, that we will have a hunt-able population in a season or two.

For a few years, we had a January dove season. I haven't looked at the booklet to see if we still do, or not.

We have a late Dove season here that starts on Christmas Day and lasts for 2 weeks! It's usually pretty good.

Well, i wouldnt know about that since i suppose those hunts are reserved for your VIP friends.

Hopefully we can get together on that next season, Doc.

Oh i am so happy i suckered you into that trap.

Im hoping too that you can get out here some time with Doc R and me on a hunt.

Oh but the agony of having our cup running over.

Sounds good to me!

Ya I'm recalling "Outdoor Life" from the seventies, where to a teenager in New York stories of shooting white-wings on the Border were as alien as if it took place on the moon.

On a different species... Coopers Hawks are the original "chicken hawk", a species intensively persecuted to the extent it became "a rare forest hawk" over most of the Lower 48.

Pretty much every tree in San Antonio has white-wings nesting in it now, the population in the city alone estimated at more than two million. Since I've been in Texas, Coopers Hawks have always been present in the Hill Country just north and west of town, they even nest in the wild setting of Camp Bullis, technically within the city limits.

Never did make the leap to nest in the city though, despite the enormous prey base in the form of white-wings now available.

Starting about ten years ago, Coopers were noted as nesting in several Florida cities, as noted ruefully by those who keep colonies of purple martins. Several martin colonies have been wiped out entirely by these hawks.

These urban Coopers have been spreading east, first across Louisiana, and a few years back in the Houston area. Ain't reached San Antonio yet, but when they do they should prosper.

The point being that the Western Coopers in the Hill Country, tho' outwardly identical, obviously differ in behavior from these new urban ones, most likely due to genetics.

Same thing appears to be true of White-wings, it likely weren't climate that kept 'em out, more'n likely the birds themselves. Nowadays they have gone urban, big time, flying considerable distances out of these centers to surrounding rural areas to feed.

Birdwatcher

Perhaps you can tell me what killed the dove in what I described earlier, with many, many dove being lethargic, then dead in a 12 hour period where there was a temperature change from the 60's to minus 15?

It happened relatively fast. At dusk all the dove were lethargic and you could walk right up to them, and in the morning they littered the ground. Killed all of them. No exceptions. Dead dove were everywhere in any direction for at least 75-100 miles.

That storm killed lots more than dove too. It killed cattle, and various other livestock and wildlife. A guy took a picture of a fox that was frozen dead, and it was curled up, looked like it was sleeping.

Some call it "nature".