Morning Doves Diet
The mourning dove belongs to the taxonomic classification Zenaida. Also known as the rain dove, the American mourning dove and the western turtle dove, it is one of the most abundant birds in North America. The Michigan state government calculated in 2006 that there were some 400 million mourning doves across the continent.
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Food
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Seeds make up the vast majority of the mourning dove's diet. As much as 99 percent of the food they eat is weed seeds and grains. The former include sunflower, pigweed, foxtails and ragweed, while grains include millet, rye, oats, sorghum and wheat. The remaining small percentage of their diet constitutes insects such as grasshoppers, ants and snails.
Feeding
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Mourning doves will occasionally feed while perched in trees, but most of the time they eat while on the ground. Thus, they prefer to eat in more open, flat areas of land where they are more likely to spot predators approaching. Mourning doves can travel up to eight miles a day in search of food. It is a daytime feeder, usually visiting water sources at dawn and dusk.
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Digestion
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Seeds can be difficult to digest. Essentially they are tough outer husks protecting plant spores inside. These spores are where the nutrition for seed-eaters lie, and they must break down the outer husk to benefit from it. Mourning doves augment their natural digestive juices by eating grit. These small stones remain in their stomachs and serve to grind up the seeds, making digestion easier.
Chick Diet
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Young mourning dove chicks, called squabs, are completely helpless when they hatch, unable to feed on solid food. Thus, for the first few days of life they are fed “dove's milk.” This is a fat-laden substance produced in the crop (a chamber at the top of the esophagus) of both parents. This milk is gradually augmented with seeds as the chicks grow until they fledge after approximately two weeks and feed themselves on the adult diet.
Problem
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Mourning doves are one of the most hunted birds in North America. Aside from the obvious effect this has on mourning dove numbers, the birds encounter another diet-related problem because of it. It areas where they and other species of birds are hunted heavily, discarded lead shot becomes scattered on the ground. The doves sometimes mistake this ammunition for seeds and eat it. Lead is poisonous and, if too much is injested, can prove fatal.
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References
- Photo Credit head of a mourning dove image by Pix by Marti from Fotolia.com
