GRAND JUNCTION — “Hwwwwwaaaaaaaahhh.”
It’s an annoying sound, described as a screech, a hiss or a nasally shriek. And it’s being heard much more often these days from the backyards of Denver to the pasture lands around Cortez.
It is the sound of an avian interloper, the Eurasian collared dove. This bad bird has found its way northwest from the Bahamas and made itself at home across the United States.
It has invaded Colorado and, besides irritating humans with its noise, it bullies other birds. It has become so pervasive that some birders worry it might eventually muscle out other species like the common mourning dove.
“It is noisy and obnoxious,” said William Kaempfer, a vice chancellor and provost at the University of Colorado and one of the state’s pre-eminent birders.
The first Eurasian collared dove spotted by ornithologists in Colorado was in Rocky Ford in 1996. In the latest Audubon Christmas Bird Count, there were close to 19,000 in the state. They have now populated all 64 counties in Colorado. Fort Collins, with 3,177 collared doves, showed the highest concentration of the birds in the nation last year.
“It’s pretty astounding to look at the distribution we have,” said Lynn Wickersham, the Durango-based state coordinator for the Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas project.
Because the collared dove resembles the soothing mourning dove, people confuse the two and wonder if the gentle doves they have known for a lifetime have turned into the flying equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.
Some comments taken from bird-watching blogs: “What is wrong with these birds?” “They sound like they are puking.” “They sound like dinosaurs.” “They are the most irritating bird in the world.”
Collared doves originated in the Indian subcontinent and migrated to Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. From there, they got a boat ride to a new world.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology relates, under “cool facts” about the birds, that the Eurasian collared dove was loosed on this continent in the 1970s after several of the birds escaped from a pet shop in the Bahamas during a burglary. The shop owner then released the remainder of the approximately 50 doves from his shop.
They soon turned up in Florida. The birds began hopscotching their way north and west across the country. They appear to skip over some areas and settle into others where they can be the bullies of bird feeders.
Besides the shrieking sound they make while in flight — likely a warning call or an attention-getter for mating — and their coarse, staccato “kuk KOO kuk” cooing, collared doves can be distinguished from mourning doves in other ways. They have a dark “collar” on their necks; they are chunkier; and their tails are squared off rather than pointed like a mourning dove’s.
Mourning doves, with their soothing trademark “cooaHOO coo coo” sound, have smudges on their cheeks rather than collars. They like to build their nests close to, or even in, human habitations. Their nests have been found in patio flower pots and in the curve of front-door wreaths.
According to the Cornell Lab, mourning doves can store more than 17,000 seeds at a time in an enlarged area of their esophagus.
For those who hate having the gentle cooing of the mourning doves drowned out by the squawking clunky cooing of collared doves, there might be good news.
Studies done so far don’t show that the invasive birds are running out or killing off the mourning doves, even though there are many anecdotal accounts of the collared doves chasing mourning doves and even blue jays from feeders. They also have been seen attacking and killing finches.
“I am not convinced the Eurasian collared dove will always be here with us,” Kaempfer said. “Sometimes birds appear and have big booms in population and then they disappear.”
Cooper’s hawks, which are expert avian hunters, and human hunters may help. Cooper’s hawks are showing up more often in Colorado subdivisions, where they seem to favor swooping on and killing collared doves.
Also, there is no bag limit on how many Eurasian collared doves a hunter can bring down. While those on birder websites call the doves “super annoying,” the opinions on hunting blogs are quite different.
“They are good eatin’,” wrote one hunter. “Better ‘n chicken.”
“Mmmm-mmm,” wrote another. “Dove ‘n’ dumplings.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm
