Its ability to sustain its population under such pressure is due to its prolific breeding; in warm areas, one pair may raise up to six broods of two young each in a single year.

Mourning doves eat almost exclusively seeds, but the young are fed crop milk by their parents.

Edwards's pictures of the male and female doves were drawn from live birds that had been shipped to England from the West Indies.

[6] In 1758, when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he conflated the two species.

[9][8] To resolve the confusion over the binomial names of the two species, Francis Hemming proposed in 1952 that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) secure the specific name macroura for the mourning dove and migratorius for the passenger pigeon, since this was the intended use by the authors on whose work Linnaeus had based his description.

[11] The mourning dove is now placed in the genus Zenaida, introduced in 1838 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte,[12][13] commemorating his wife Zénaïde.

[17] The adult male has bright purple-pink patches on the neck sides, with light pink coloring reaching the breast.

[17] Feather colors are generally believed to be relatively static, changing only by small amounts over periods of months.

However, a 2011 study argued that since feathers have neither nerves or blood vessels, color changes must be caused by external stimuli.

Researchers analyzed how feathers of iridescent mourning doves responded to stimulus changes of adding and evaporating water.

As a result, it was discovered that iridescent feather color changed hue, became more chromatic, and increased overall reflectance by almost 50%.

Once the environmental conditions were changed, the most striking morphological difference was a twisting of colored barbules that exposed more of their surface area for reflection, which explains the observed increase in brightness.

[17] The nominate subspecies possesses shorter wings and are darker and more buff-colored than the "average" mourning dove.

The Panama mourning dove has shorter wings and legs, a longer beak, and is grayer in color.

[31] The species is resident throughout the Greater Antilles, most of Mexico, the Continental United States, southern Canada, and the Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda.

[15] It has been spotted as an accidental at least seven times in the Western Palearctic with records from the British Isles (5), the Azores (1) and Iceland (1).

[33] Mourning doves sunbathe or rain bathe by lying on the ground or a flat tree limb, leaning over, stretching one wing, and keeping this posture for up to twenty minutes.

Outside the breeding season, mourning doves roost communally in dense deciduous trees or conifers.

[35] Courtship begins with a noisy flight by the male, followed by a graceful, circular glide with outstretched wings and head down.

After landing, the male will approach the female with a puffed-out breast, bobbing head, and loud calls.

Fledging takes place in about 11–15 days, before the squabs are fully grown but after they are capable of digesting adult food.

Mourning doves do not dig or scratch for seeds, though they will push aside ground litter; instead, they eat what is readily visible.

[18] When their favorite foods are absent, mourning doves will eat the seeds of other plants, including buckwheat, rye, goosegrass and smartweed.

[40] Mourning doves can be afflicted with several different diseases and parasites, including tapeworms, nematodes, mites, and lice.

[43] The large population and its vast range explain why the mourning dove is considered to be of least concern, meaning that the species is not at immediate risk.

[44] However, reporting cautions that mourning doves are in decline in the western United States, and susceptible everywhere in the country due to lead poisoning as they eat spent shot leftover in hunting fields.

[45][46] A Huron/Wyandot legend tells of a maiden named Ayu'ra (modernly spelled Iohara) who used to care for the bird, who came to love her a great deal.

Sky Woman, the deity who guards this door, refused them entry, eventually creating smoke to blind them and take Ayu'ra's spirit away without their knowledge.

Mourning Dove was the pen name of Christine Quintasket, one of the first published Native American women authors.

Mourning dove imagery also turns up in contemporary American and Canadian poetry in the work of poets as diverse as Robert Bly, Jared Carter,[50] Lorine Niedecker,[51] and Charles Wright.