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Welcome, Morning Dove
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It was somewhere around the year 1966 when I first
heard it. It was a sound that always started at the first blush of dawn.
That wasn’t the only reason it was disturbing, it also was a non-relenting,
continuous ooah-cooo-cooo-cooo-cooo, a remorseful kind of call. It was no
sound to greet the new day and I found it extremely irritating, quite aside
from the fact that it was waking me up so early each morning.
Finally one morning, I could stand it no longer. I would track down this
nuisance. Should I take binoculars or my shotgun? I didn’t have to to travel
far from my house before I located the source of the plaintive call. There
sitting on a telephone wire was, of all things, a PIGEON!
Now, pigeons were fairly common around the village in those days.
The cavernous, high-ceiling, steel-girded buildings of the then abandoned
Oval Wood Dish factory, with their broken windows, were home to hundreds of
pigeons. Also, dozens of pigeons daily collected under the marquee of Billy
Donovan’s Park Street movie theater, feasting on the popcorn spilled or
discarded by movie goers. This pigeon, however, was different. It resembled
pictures that I had seen of a bird called a passenger pigeon, but as far as
anyone knew, the very last passenger pigeon died in a Cincinnati zoo in
1916. At one time, I learned, it had been the most abundant bird in the
world. Nearly eighteen inches long, handsome in pastel shades of blue, gray,
rose and brown, it swept across the sky in immense flocks that sometimes
contained billions of birds literally blotting out the sun for hours, almost
as if an eclipse had occurred, during their passage.
It has been reported that “when they gathered to roost for the night, they
broke great limbs from forest trees with the sheer weight of their numbers,
and the sound of their wings and the noise of their settling could be heard
for miles.”
Could this be a passenger pigeon?
How could a bird that numbered in the billions upon billions disappear
without a trace? Could a few survivors have found refuge in the Adirondacks?
A phone call to Mrs. Jack Delehanty, Sr., arguably the community’s leading
bird authority, provided the answer. Mrs. Delehanty informed me that I was
probably seeing (and hearing) a mourning dove. Also variously knows as a
“turtle dove,” a “wild dove,” or a “rain crow.”
She also told me that it does resemble the altogether-extinct passenger
pigeon, and it is often mistaken for that bird, so often, it seems, that
ornithologists take little interest in announcements that such a pigeon has
been seen. Mrs. Delehanty further informed me that seeing a mourning dove
this far north (1965) was most uncommon. Please note that the mourning dove
is now (1999) very common in this locality. As an untrained observer, I’m
not sure why this is so, except that we now have more open areas (clear
cuts, storm damage, etc.) interspersed with trees and woody shrubs that are
essential habitat for a sizable mourning dove population. What I do know is
that their sudden appearance is significant from a historical as well as an
ornithological perspective.
So, while I still personally find its continued call at the first light of
day to be annoying and to sound like hopeless sorrow and remorse (unlike,
I’ll admit, some folks who find it to sound like tenderest love and
devotion), isn’t it nice to know that this area has provided a sanctuary
that allows the bird to hold its own in what was a declining population?
Remember, only a few years ago E.H. Easton, in his two-volume edition of
Birds of New York State, outlined the doves’ distribution, thus “the
mourning dove is fairly well established in all parts of New York State
excepting the northern portion above 1,000 feet in elevation, where it is
rather uncommon. It is occasionally found about the borders of the north
woods as at Lake George, Old Forge, Ausable Forks, but is more
characteristic of the . . . warmer portions . . . than the cooler
districts.”
In 1965 no reported observations were made in this locality.
So — welcome, mourning dove. Now you know why we humans find this such a
great place to live! You will recognize this dove by its call (ooah-cooo-cooo-cooo).
It looks like a pigeon but is slimmer, smaller in size, and has a long,
pointed tail. Oh yes, that whistling sound heard so often lately at dusk . .
. that’s the doves’ wings making a whistle that can be heard for up to 200
yards or more. The call, by the way, is performed primarily by unmated males
to attract females and establish a pair bond. Once paired, they will remain
together throughout the breeding season and perhaps for life.
Fifteen years ago, I ran into a deer hunter who told me that the only game
he had seen that day was a wild turkey. When I stopped laughing, he told me
that he was from Pennsylvania, and “by gosh, I know a turkey when I see
one.”
Today local residents are feeding and observing wild turkeys on their front
lawns. Local wildlife specialist Jon Kopp and his colleagues at D.E.C. don’t
bother (unless it has a collar) to record moose sightings any longer because
they are so plentiful.
Turkey vultures now contend with numerous bald eagles over the road-killed
deer carcasses put out as food and attraction, a bird that not long ago was
uncommon, if not rare, in this locality. Canadian geese have become so
plentiful (and prolific) that they have become a problem nuisance on lawns
and docks.
Some wildlife like the blue bird has made a comeback because we have stopped
poisoning it with DDT and other toxins (thanks to Racheal Carson), but the
sudden appearance of other wildlife to our region represents dramatic
wildlife changes. What the implications are, I’ll leave to the experts. |
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