Bird watching in Asean - Red turtle dove

Red Collared Dove, Red Turtle Dove, Streptopelia tranquebarica, นกเขาไฟ

Length: 23 cm
Wingspan:
Weight:
Longevity:
Distinctive Feature • Black collar
Similar Species • From opus at www.birdforum.net the forum for wild birds and birding.
Female / Male / Juvenile • Female is brown From opus at www.birdforum.net the forum for wild birds and birding.

The Red Turtle Dove (Streptopelia tranquebarica), also known as the Red Collared Dove, is a small pigeon which is a resident breeding bird in the tropics of Asia. The male has a blue-grey head and a red-brown body. The female is much plainer with pale brown plumage similar to that of the larger Eurasian Collared Dove .

Distribution and habitat
This dove is essentially a plains species, extending to Taiwan and the Philippines but uncommon on the Malaysian archipelago, avoiding rocky foothill and an oriental species. There is however a summer migration into the broader cultivated valleys of Afghania where it breeds. It is the most common dove throughout Punjab.

It is a summer migrant visitor to India, where it is more or less resident. It prefers better-wooded tracts such as canal or roadside tree plantations and avoids extensive desert regions. When they first arrive they are often in small flocks, but they soon split up and start pair formation and breeding.

Range map from www.oiseaux.net - Ornithological Portal Oiseaux.net

www.oiseaux.net is one of those MUST visit pages if you're in to bird watching. You can find just about everything there

Taxonomy
The red turtle dove was formally described by the French naturalist Johann Hermann in 1804 and given the binomial name Columba tranquebarica. The specific epithet is from the town Tranquebar now Tharangambadi, on the Coromandel Coast in southern India. The red turtle dove is now placed in genus Streptopelia that was introduced in 1855 by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. The genus name is from the Ancient Greek streptos meaning "collar" and peleia meaning "dove".

Two subspecies are recognised:

• S. t. humilis (Temminck, 1824) – east Nepal, northeast India and northeast Tibet to north China and the Philippines

• S. t. tranquebarica (Hermann, 1804) – Pakistan, peninsular India, west Nepal

Description
The red turtle dove is a relatively small pigeon with a length of 20.5–23 cm and a weight of around 104 g. The male has a bluish head and light red-brown body with a black ring round its neck while the female is similar but is pinkish all over.

Length: 23 cm

Wingspan:

Weight:

Longevity:

Distinctive Feature

• Black collar

Similar Species

•

From opus at www.birdforum.net the forum for wild birds and birding.

Female / Male / Juvenile

• Female is brown

From opus at www.birdforum.net the forum for wild birds and birding.

Listen to the Red turtle dove

Sound from www.xeno-canto.org

Status
The red turtle dove has an extremely large range. The population size has not been quantified but is believed to be large. There is some evidence for a decline in the population but the decline is slow and the species has been evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as of Least concern.

Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2.
International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 26 November 2013.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia