Pigeon or Dove Feather

This month, as the collective nouns above indicate, we are looking at pigeons and doves. We have to confess that, for the first time since Meadow Muses began, none of the photographs in the main part of this month's page were actually taken in the meadow! It's very hard to get near enough to the many different birds we see out there, as there's nowhere much to hide and they won't keep still! The nearest we could get was a rather lovely feather trapped on a rose thorn, from its colour probably a feather from a dove or pigeon. This month's featured species, however, is a fungus, which was found and photographed in Reg's Meadow.

Doves and Pigeons

Doves and pigeons are everyday sights at the Hawk Conservancy, flying around in large flocks, dashing out of the way of the falcons, getting themselves mistaken for raptors and ambling round on the ground. But did you realise how many different sorts you might be seeing?

Feral Pigeon Flock

Technically there is no biological difference between doves and pigeons, but the word "dove" is sometimes applied to the smaller members of the family and "pigeon" to the larger. "Dove" is the Old English name of the family and is related to the word "dive", because of the impetuous headlong flight of so many of the family. "Pigeon" is a Norman French word meaning "peeper" and was originally used for young domesticated birds kept and bred for the table - as with many animal names, the old English word was used for the living animal (eg sheep, swine and ox) and the French word for the meat (eg mutton, pork and beef).The pigeon family is one of the most widely distributed bird families, with over 300 species scattered through every continent except Antarctica. They range in size from tiny quail-doves hardly bigger than a sparrow to the majestic Crowned Pigeon which is the size of a large hen. It may be surprising to know that the Dodo was a giant flightless pigeon.

Various Coloured Feral Pigeons

Pigeons vary in colour - we may think of them as mainly grey (ours are), but some tropical doves are vivid greens and mauves. However, they all share certain features which makes the family unusually easy to recognise. They are plump-bodied, with soft, smooth plumage, rather small heads and tiny feet, and often bob their heads as they walk. Many of them have no fixed breeding season but can breed all the year round. Most have a distinctive "coo"-based call, which is often recognisable as a pigeon even if it is not clear which species you are hearing. Unlike any other bird, they feed their young on a substance known as "pigeon's milk": not regurgitated or gathered food items, but a secretion from the walls of the crop.

 

 

Wood Pigeons

Britain has five native species of pigeon, of which one is virtually extinct in the wild, and one is a summer migrant. All of them occur in some form in Hampshire. Our three big pigeons are the Wood Pigeon, Stock Dove and Rock Dove. They all belong to the genus Columba - a word which is itself related to an ancient Greek word meaning "diver". The Wood Pigeon is Europe's biggest pigeon, very common and easy to recognise and the species most often seen diving for cover during the flying demonstrations. It is blue-grey on back and wings, and pinkish underneath, with a black band near the end of the tail and striking white bands on the wings in flight. Adults also have a white collar, which gave the bird its old name "Ring Dove". Their song is a sleepy "cu-COO-coo...coo-coo," repeated over and over and usually ending with a short single "cu". Wood Pigeons can form huge flocks and be serious agricultural pests. They nest in untidy platforms of twigs in trees.

Stock Dove

The somewhat smaller and slimmer Stock Dove is an increasingly uncommon pigeon of open farmland. We are privileged to have these birds nesting in the Conservancy grounds. They are a clean, blue-grey with two short black bars on their flight feathers, and never show any white. Their song is quite low and barking and they nest in holes (even owl boxes). It's unusual to see them in groups of more than half a dozen.

 

 

Feral Pigeon - Blue Rock Dove Pattern	Man-made Cliffs

The Blue Rock Dove is the ancestor of all domestic pigeon varieties, and is now only found in Britain in its wild form in the extreme west of Scotland and Ireland. Exactly the same size as the Stock Dove, it too is blue-grey, but has a pure white rump (lower back) and two strong black bars all along its flight feathers. This pattern, or something very similar, occurs in quite a lot of feral or town pigeons. It is however always possible to recognise a flock of feral pigeons as it will invariably include birds with a huge variety of colours, from black to white via ginger and every combination in between! These birds, as their name suggests, originally lived on coastal cliffs, where their descendants have also made themselves at home. They find themselves equally at home on man-made cliffs in towns.

Collared Dove

One bird that would have been unknown to even our recent ancestors is the dainty Collared Dove, a small, pinkish-grey pigeon with a rather long white-edged tail and a black neck-band. This bird is originally a bird of the Balkan countries, but early last century it began an advance north and west, arriving in Britain in the 1950s. It is now a familiar bird almost all over (and has continued its advance across the Atlantic!). Its song is "coo-COOO, coo" and may be responsible for some unseasonal cuckoo reports, as the last "coo" can disappear. Bird nerds enjoy listening for its anachronistic voice in television costume dramas. The Collared Dove is a member of the mainly African and Asian genus Streptopelia ("twisting dove") of slim, very fast-flying and agile doves. Its specific name "decaocto" means "eighteen": either because it has 18 tail feathers (which is unusual in doves) or because of a legend of an exhausted serving woman who prayed to be freed from her miserable life for which she was paid just eighteen pence a year. A kindly god turned her into a dove which called "decaoc-to" for ever in mournful tones, no doubt to the embarrassment of her former employer!

Turtle Dove

The last British dove is another Streptopelia and could possibly turn up in the Conservancy: this is the Turtle Dove. This bird, so common in many European countries, is an increasingly rare summer visitor to Britain but is found in several parts of Hampshire. It is smaller and darker than the Collared Dove, little bigger than a Blackbird. At close range its back is most attractively patterned in shades of rusty brown. Turtle Doves have nothing to do with turtles: their Latin name turtur is a version of their purring song, much more often heard than the bird is seen, and extraordinarily difficult to locate. Hampshire bird watchers are always glad when "the voice of the turtle is heard in the land", probably from a yew tree on a piece of chalk downland. It would be a real red-letter day to find this charming little dove in the meadow one summer.

Featured Species - Trametes versicolor

(also known as Coriolus versicolor)

Trametes versicolor is a common, fan-shaped bracket fungus, found practically all over the world, growing all year round. It is a polypore, the name meaning "many pores", and forms overlapping layers of multicoloured fruit bodies. The top surface of the cap has concentric zones of different colours, while the underside is covered with whitish pores. The flesh is one to three millimetres thick, with a leathery texture and a velvety upper surface which becomes smooth with age. Trametes is the name of the genus and versicolor means "of several (or changing) colours". Alternative common names include Turkey Tails, Many-Coloured Polypore, Many-Zoned Polypore, Cloud Mushroom (China) and Mushroom by the River (Japan). The fungus is found on dead wood and logs, cut or fallen, as well as on living trees. We found this specimen growing on a log pile in Patrick's Wood, one of the copses in the meadow.

This is a fungus with a long history of use. It is generally classified today as non-edible, but traditionally the leathery flesh was boiled in water and softened to produce teas and soups. During the Ming Dynasty in China it was believed to be beneficial to a person's spirit and vital energy, to strengthen ligaments and bones and to promote longevity and vitality. Since then it has been credited with many valuable properties, beginning in the far east but now used medicinally all over the world. In Mexico it is used to treat impetigo and ringworm; elsewhere its traditional uses include treatment for cramp, colic, congestive conditions, nausea, urinary problems, as well as to prevent miscarriage and as an appetite booster. The fungus is non-toxic, has few known side-effects and is high in polysaccharides, which have very potent natural immune properties. In modern medicine it is used to treat respiratory infection, hepatitis, atherosclerosis (thickening of artery walls by cholesterol and other harmful deposits) and lung disorders. Drugs derived from this fungus are now proving to be very valuable in the prevention and cure of cancer. They are thought to stimulate the body's own cancer-fighting cells and are used alongside chemotherapy.

Other uses include the removal of colour from pulp and paper mill effluents, helping to reduce water pollution, and the bleaching and delignification of wood pulp, which is the removal of lignin from the pulp in order to enable it to be made into paper and craft products.

This easily-overlooked fungus, growing unobtrusively in a small corner of our meadow, is a very valuable species indeed, as well as being rather beautiful to look at.

Photo credits:
Photos by the authors except:
Collared Dove ©2004 Richard Burkmar; Turtle Dove ©2005 Joan Burkmar. Space for Nature
Stock Dove ©2006 Ben van der Broek - see Ben van den Broek's Outdoor Photography