Eurasian Collared-Dove

Tórtola Collarina Euroasiática

Streptopelia decaocto

The Eurasian collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto), often simply just collared dove, is a dove species native to Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. It has also been introduced to Japan, North and Central America, and the islands in the Caribbean. == Taxonomy == The Hungarian naturalist Imre Frivaldszky first described the Eurasian collared dove with the scientific name Columba risoria varietas C. decaocto in 1838, considering it a wild variety of the domesticated barbary dove. The type locality is Plovdiv in Bulgaria. It is now placed in genus Streptopelia that was described in 1855 by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. The Burmese collared dove (S. xanthocycla) was formerly considered a subspecies of the Eurasian collared dove, but was split as a distinct species by the IOC in 2021. Two other subspecies were formerly sometimes accepted, S. d. stoliczkae from Turkestan in central Asia and S. d. intercedens from southern India and Sri Lanka; they are now considered junior synonyms of the species. The Eurasian collared dove is also closely related to the Sunda collared dove of southeast Asia and the African collared dove of Sub-Saharan Africa, forming a superspecies with these. Identification from the African collared dove is very difficult with silent birds, with the African species being marginally smaller and paler, but the calls are very distinct, a soft purring "Cou'crrrrroouw" in the African collared dove quite unlike the Eurasian collared dove's three-note cooing.