Migratory Species: Pigeons and Doves

Young rock doves (Columba livia), the familiar urban pigeon, are raised commercially and marketed as “squabs.” Native to the Mediterranean region, they have been naturalized wherever humans took them—they are as at home in our cities as we are.

Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) and white-winged doves (Zenaida asiatica) are hunted in some states for their dark, liver-like breast meat; however, other states treat these migratory birds as songbirds, so they are protected from hunters. The most famous—or infamous—species was Ectopistes migratorius, the passenger pigeon. Once they were so numerous that their flocks darkened the sky from horizon to horizon. Such vast numbers were killed and shipped to urban markets that they were nearly extinct by the late nineteenth century. The last one died, in captivity, in 1914.