19 two nights in a row and 3 in of snow night before last. Cloudy, cold for three days and fine mist of ice last night.

Let the cocker out this am and he finds a white wing casualty, which we notice after the fact when he doesnt bust bsck in after painting the snow.

I chase him down (wifes dog), scare him, pitch mouthed dove over fence and we come in.

A few later i hear a loud thump, like when our resident aplomodo attacks our flock of a hundred or so Incas, morning, white wings and ringnecks as they devour a quarter gallon of hen scratch my wife puts on the picnic table twice a day, as when one tries to fly through a closed window.

I go out and it's sitting on the back porch with its head tilted over to the right a bit. The left eye is open but its right, along with its entire right side is covered in ice near an eighth inch thick.

When i bent to pick it up i was going to dehead it but not wanting to get in trouble from some of the gang for killing a dove out of season i straightened its ruffeld rt wing feathers a bit and brought it in.

Holding it in my hands a bit the ice started thawing and i was, after a bit, able to pick it off. It would not take water drops from my finger though i dont know where they can get water in this weather. Figuring its pretty cold i sat it in a soft recliner and laid a towel over it and where it now awaits while, i supoose, we both contemplate its future prospects.

I had initially thought it had a broken neck and would join the mess of blue quail i got last weekend but it may be that carrying the weight of ice on its head all night is the reason its head was tilted to the right.

I guess i'll check it in a while after it wsrms up and try to see if it wants water or hen sctratch before putting it out on the downwind side.

Im thinking it was ok but when trying to fly for the first time today it just could keep an even keel.

Birdy, any advice.

Any advice? Creamed over toast.

Cold will kill the hell out 'em for sure.

A few years ago when temps reached minus 15, I was at the ranch and lots of stuff died that first night. There was not a dove left alive in a large area.

Coyotes sure liked it though. They went around eating dead dove and other small game for weeks afterwards... In fact, I was calling coyotes and called up two that had dove in their mouths when they responded to the call and I shot them.

Before the dove all died, they were very lethargic that evening. You could walk right up to them. At the time the temp was just about zero at dusk. In the morning, it was -15, and the dead dove littered the ground.

rockinbar;
Good morning to you sir, hopefully this still and thus far sunny last Saturday in February finds you well.

Thanks for the details on birds in your area and how the cold affects them - and the coyotes too.

I found it interesting that your coyotes would come in to a call when they were already finding good food sources. We had some type of Pasteurella virus hit our wild sheep - I think I'm calling it the right thing here, but might not be - they got it from interaction with domestic sheep and before it was done about 2/3 of our California's were dead up and down the east side of our valley.

Anyway, that winter was also a heavy snow one which forces a lot if not most of the deer and sheep into pretty confined areas so the predation gets easier for the coyotes, cougars and bobcats.

We repeatedly failed to get a coyote to do anything other than bark or howl back at us that winter and I always supposed that it was because they had full bellies from dead sheep and so weren't interested in seeing who'd killed a rabbit one ridge over.

As with most things though sir, that's just a guess on my part and like as not - a poor one at that.

It's good to "talk" to you anyway sir and all the best to you this weekend.

Dwayne

There is a reason many birds fly south for the winter. Those that don't, run the risk of becoming an easy snack for those animals that can't migrate to avoid the bad weather. Winters can be hard on wildlife. Better a quick death from you than being eaten alive by some coyote. My vote would be smother fried with grits…

Dwayne,

I have seen what you describe with coyotes as well. The instances I have seen it was with coyotes and an abundance of grasshoppers. Certain years have produced millions of grasshoppers, and coyotes love them!

During the time the grasshoppers are thick, it's hard to call in coyotes, for sure. It usually lasts until there is a freeze that is intense enough to kill the grasshoppers, and even then, the coyotes will graze for days on the dead, frozen grasshoppers, and only respond to distress calls after the supply of them is eaten up. Although you can call them up with coyote vocalizations. Especially in breeding season.

The dove were not plentiful enough to stop the coyotes from coming to the call. It just shows the coyotes greedy nature...

I had a friend call and kill one that came in with a partially eaten WT deer fawn clamped in it's jaws...

All is well here. Wish it would rain some more, though! (Y'all can keep the ice up your way.)

A coyote just can't pass up a free meal. I wasn't on this hunt but was told about a coyote pursued by multiple vehicles. It headed for a narrow strip of unpicked corn. It went in one end and came out the other with a pheasant in it's mouth.
Even though he was closely pursued he still had time for lunch.

Back in the 'seventies I'd hired my brother to pump a lease for me. During a real bad cold spell, he got to picking up dead doves all over the place. Seems like he wound up with 20 or 30 of 'em, which he dressed,cooked, and ate.

Bobwhites will rustle up something to eat, while a dove will just sit on a limb until he freezes to death.

After a prolonged ice and snow storm years ago, I took one of my bird dogs out just to get an idea how many quail had survived. To my surprise, we got into lots of birds, so I killed a couple to see what they were eating.

Their craws were full of a strange looking "grain" that I couldn't ever remember seeing before. I called TP&W and described it to the guy on the phone.

He said it was grasshopper eggs!

I was hunting alongside the Little Wichita River and the banks of the river weren't frozen hard. The quail had discovered they could scratch down and find the eggs laid by the grasshoppers.

You definately aren't helping. I was thinking terriyaki over a hot grill.

I just went to end its misery and found it very much alive and warm and dry while holding its head straight and trying to fly.

I ran water from the tap into my cupped hand and after dipping its beak into it several times it drank a bit. Got a small cup and stuck its beak half wsy in a few times and it suddenly started plunging its head in to the eyeballs and drinking.

Put it and water and scratch and rags in a covered clear plastic storage container on the dryer.

Its supposed to warm drastically this afternoon when i plan to set it free.

Way to go Doc.
The thought of grasshopper eggs
never crossed my mind.

Grits? You forget - waste not, want not.

The laws of nature seem cruel to humans. Liberals have a particularly hard time with them.

True!

They don't have a problem killing babies, or threatening the lives and families of hunters though. Idiots, one and all.

The imported Eurasian collared doves don't seem to migrate. They've been here year round for a few years. Granted, we've had a series of very mild winters with no temps below 0 for a number of years so I don't know how they'd survive serious cold. However, they've handled 10F nicely. While not native, they're supposed to be good eating and there's no closed season and no limit.

They are good eating, RC.

I like shooting them at the high altitude they can fly... Sounds like someone dropped a watermelon out of an airplane when they hit the ground.... Heavy bastids.

They need a bird trap. They hang around barn yards and in town and, like pigeons, seem to move out when guns go off. Im thinking them snd the whitewings are keeping the mourning doves moved out of town.

I don't understand doves. At the first cool snap in the fall, they are gone from the Dalotas and Kansas, where I hunt them.
But I have 15-20 at my bird feeder in the Minneapols area every day all winter long. And we have seen a good bit of sub zero weather.

I think the live oaks dropping acorns in town keep them from heading south.

Dovie flew away a few minutes ago after getting rambunctious in its holding cell.

Awesome!

Maybe it caught the bird flu and died.

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".

I wish!
I usually have to spend a CCI 22short for a snack.

Dunno.

Mourning doves overwinter as far as South Dakota and Montana.

In Cardinals, they have figured out that the coldest a cardinal can survive the night is about -40 F and that the northern edge of their range is determined by this, how much they can eat in relation to temperature, too cold and they cannot eat enough in the days to survive the nights, cardinals being a southern species spread north in the last 100 years and not found nearly so far north as is the mourning dove.

Once in October we had thousands of dead barn swallows in piles around a local lake after an early cold front, these swallows had come down with the front, presumably starving the whole time, and were in deep distress when they got here, foraging low over the shallows looking for insects and allowing us to walk right up to them.

Maybe those doves had come down with the front too, were there NO doves anywhere for days or weeks after that?

First thing I woulda done with the fresh carcasses is feel for the breastbone, it will stick way out on a bird that metabolised itself to death, the body fat first and then the flight muscles, leaving the bird too weak to fly near the end (I would say "starved to death" but it happens so quick its hard to think of it in those terms.)

Otherwise, is there some sort of temperature shock that can set in after a eighty degree drop in temperature? I dunno.

Birdwatcher