Eurasian Collared-Dove

How to find it

Look for it perched on phone wires and fence posts around houses. It is often in small groups or flocks in residential and developed areas, so check towns rather than forest. Listen for the three-part coo, which is the easiest clue. When one lands or flies off, watch for a flash of white tail feathers. The white band at the tail tip shows best from below.

How to recognise it

This is a medium-sized dove, about 32 cm long across its range, and a little larger than the European Turtle-Dove.

Look for these marks:

Grayish beige plumage with a pinkish tinge on the head and chest.

A uniform light earthy brown back.

A black collar edged in white on the nape, seen as a black crescent, which gives the bird its name.

A squared tail.

A white band at the tail tip, best seen from below.

In flight, the dark flight feathers contrast with the paler wing, and the white outer tail feathers show best when the bird spreads its tail.

What it sounds like

Recording: bobhoard, CC0 1.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

This dove forages on the ground, mostly for seeds, and nests in trees. It is often in small groups or flocks, and it often sits on phone wires and fence posts. Males clap their wings together during display flights. Where food is available, breeding can happen all year, and pairs often raise three or four broods a year. It is not a wary bird and often feeds very close to people. Where it spreads it may be an aggressive, territorial competitor with native doves.

Where it lives

Across its range this dove lives mainly in towns and suburbs, in residential and developed areas. In Costa Rica the only place named so far is Ciudad Cortés, in Puntarenas province in the south Pacific region, where the first accepted record was made. It is also recorded for neighbouring Nicaragua and Panama, which shows the species reaching from Central America toward South America. Its Costa Rican range may still be changing.

Similar birds

The African Collared-Dove looks almost the same, and voice separates them best: the Eurasian gives a clear, rhythmic, three-syllable call, while the African gives a rolling, purring one. The Ringneck Dove, a captive dove that sometimes escapes, also has a black neck collar. Mourning Doves are smaller and a richer brown, with a pointed tail, black spots on the back and no black half-collar.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Spanish name on the Costa Rican list is Tórtola Turca. Other Spanish names used elsewhere are paloma turca de collar, paloma habanera and tórtola de collar, but these are general names, not Costa Rican nicknames. The species name decaocto means eighteen in Greek. In a Greek myth, an underpaid maid begged the gods for release and was turned into a dove, and her cooing was said to repeat that number forever.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list codes it R and accepted it as a new species for Costa Rica in 2016.

Photography tips

Wires and fence posts are your best stage, as it often sits there and shows a flash of white tail feathers as it lands. In flight the white outer tail feathers show best when the bird spreads its tail, and the dark flight feathers contrast with the paler wing. Both help with identification and flight shots.