The upperparts tend to be buffy brown and the underparts are often a shade of pinkish-brown, and they have a characteristic black-and-white patch on the neck.

Most of the species are resident or disperse over short distances, but two (the European and Oriental turtle doves) are long-distance migrants breeding in temperate areas and wintering in the tropics.

The sexes are not differentiated in most of the species, except for the red collared dove, where the males are orange-red with a greyish head, and the females a duller brown.

The Eurasian collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto) in particular has expanded naturally out of its original range of the warmer temperate regions from southeastern Europe to India to colonise the rest of Europe, reaching as far west as Great Britain by 1960 and Ireland soon after, and also east across northern China to Japan.

[3] Also in 1855, the English zoologist George Robert Gray designated the type species as Streptopelia risoria, the Barbary dove.