Talk:European turtle dove

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There may be an ambiguity problem here - I'm seeing several different scientific names for birds called "turtle doves". --mav

there are several turtle dove species, but only the European S. turtur is normally referred to unqualified. Other scientific names refer to different species where there is always a qualifie, eg Oriental turtle dovejimfbleak

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Can we merge turtle-dove here? --Kaihsu 13:47 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

Better not to, in my view, Kaihsu. The two entries have very different puropses. They should certainly link to one another though. Tannin

We could use a horizontal line to separate the two, with the Biblical one on the bottom.... --Kaihsu 14:01 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

Well, put like that I can't really say I object, though I still don't see much purpose in it. Let's let it sit for a day or two, see if anyone else has a view. If there are no objections, then it's up to you. Tannin

I was going to suggest deleting turtle-dove. I certainly wouldn't want to put them on the same page, since as Tannin said they serve completely different puposes, and have a time difference of 92 years. jimfbleak 14:12 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

Cited in Flint Journal

[1] Whatever page it turns out to be in the article online, it will say 'according to Wikipedia' for the turtle doves. This proves that WIkipedia is gaining credence. ~crazytales·t·c 14:37, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The Turtle Dove

As I understand it, The Turtle Dove is also the name of one of the most beautiful songs ever composed. Is there really no Wikipedia article for this song? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone, and leave you for a while ... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:12, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Why "turtle"?

Can anybody explain? Palpalpalpal (talk) 22:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Despite the identical spelling, the "turtle" of the name, derived from Latin turtur, has no connection with the marine reptile, "turtle" in that case coming originally from late Latin tortuca. Turtur represents the soft purring call of the bird. I've added the first sentence of this answer to the text Jimfbleak. Talk to me 05:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Photo of egg

The same photo of the egg in this article is being used for both the oriental turtle dove and the European Turtle Dove. The same is happening in a number of laguages. Regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 12:10, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

This is very odd - why does European Turtle Dove above show as as "page does not exist"? Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 12:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

There's no redirect page for the difference in capitalization. Lost on Belmont (talk) 13:47, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Lost on belmont: Thanks. But, no, that is not it - I tried both ways, a few times, and whatever I do, it does not change. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 18:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind, but I've capitalized each letter and now it points to the existent page. If you try going to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/european_turtle_dove" you'll see that the lowercase version doesn't exist. It's just the capitalization. Lost on Belmont (talk) 22:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, if you look carefully at the surface of both eggs, you'll see that they are, in fact, different eggs with the same background. Lost on Belmont (talk) 22:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Well spotted! Um abraço, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Move to Turtle Dove

Now the Turtle Dove is redirected to European Turtle Dove. As some sources say, they are the same [2]. But the problem is that this bird (Streptopelia turtur) is native to and found in Asia and Africa as well, and it's not encyclopedic to call a Eurocia & Africa native bird as only European!
(Native Asian and African countries: Afghanistan; Algeria; Andorra; Armenia (Armenia); Azerbaijan; Bahrain; Cameroon; Chad; China; Egypt; Eritrea; Estonia; Ethiopia; Gabon; Gambia; Ghana; Guinea-Bissau; Iran, Iraq; Jordan; Kuwait; Kyrgyzstan; Libya; Mali; Mauritania; Moldova; Mongolia; Morocco; Niger; Nigeria; Oman; Qatar; Romania; Russian Federation; Russian Federation; Saudi Arabia; Senegal; Slovenia; Somalia; South Sudan; Sudan; Syrian; Tajikistan; Tunisia; Turkey; Turkmenistan; United Arab Emirates; Uzbekistan; Western Sahara; Yemen [3], [4])--Taranet (talk) 09:28, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hunting cite

Can we get a more scholarly source for the hunting citation? The current one is definitely WP:BIASED. And it's unclear whether the Maltese hunting should be enough to matter - if the turtle dove population declined from 2 billion to 1 billion over 10 years, then obviously 100k birds per year would be a drop in the bucket. However, if it declined from 2 million to 1 million over the same period then hunting would definitely have played a role. Faceless Enemy (talk) 02:55, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

@MeegsC: my problem with the source is that at the end it tells people to "Put pressure on countries which allow hunting: e.g. support the RSPB and BirdLife Malta in their campaign against spring hunting." The source is definitely biased. I read up on the issue a bit more, and it seems like the source also has a significant factual error, which leads me to seriously doubt its reliability on this topic. It says that "over 100,000 [turtle doves] are killed each autumn in Malta alone." However, according to this paper by the Maltese government, "during the period 1 September 2011 until 31 January 2012, a total of 4,302 Turtle Doves and 6,281 Quails were hunted." Also, it says that "during the 2012 Spring Hunting Season a total of 805 Turtle Doves and 151 Quails were shot". Even making the assumption that both numbers are underreported by 50% (which seems a bit far-fetched; the government describes the hunt occurring under "strictly supervised conditions"), that still gives us a total of only about 10,000 doves a year. Faceless Enemy (talk) 11:52, 19 April 2015 (UTC) (Copied from personal talk page 17:52, 19 April 2015)

I have a couple of journal database accounts through Wikipedia; I'll see what I can find. MeegsC (talk) 12:48, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I've had a quick trawl. My gut feeling/remembrance (from dealing with migratory birds for some time) was that the statement is correct - the Maltese and Morroccan takes are enormous. However, I couldn't find anything re turtle doves at this point. Further searching may be warranted. --Elmidae (talk) 18:26, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it used to be higher, and 2011/2012 was a bad year for hunting ("Reggie says that he has not shot any birds for two years, because the numbers of turtle doves in particular have severely dropped owing to a loss of habitat on the Libyan coast.")? Or the total number of birds killed in Malta was 100K, not total number of turtle doves? Or maybe Morocco + Malta added up to 100K? Or some other combination thereof? Faceless Enemy (talk) 02:46, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

MeegsC and Elmidae , I found a pretty good study: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/conservation/wildbirds/hunting/docs/turtle_dove.pdf. It includes the 100k figure for Malta, though it gives that as a 1985 estimate (see note on bottom of page 19). The note seems to dismiss the Maltese government's estimate as too low, but I'm not sure that 100k is accurate either. As I said above, there is some anecdotal evidence above that hunting has decreased, even among hardcore hunters; "Reggie" seems very proud of hunting, but if he hasn't shot a turtle dove for the past two years then it might well be part of an overall decline. Faceless Enemy (talk) 03:57, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Now that is one useful source! Especially the general hunting impact assessment. Methinks we should maybe

• keep the text in the article as is
• add some mention of the inherent uncertainty of estimates
• then link prominently to this document (as in, name it in the text) and specifically Table 3, for readers to look up the breakdown by country if so inclined?

Didn't see you had already inserted this info. Did some shuffling - looks good to me now?-- Elmidae (talk) 07:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I would somewhat prefer moving it up higher for two reasons: 1) habitat loss is apparently a bigger problem for the population than hunting and 2) the paragraph segues nicely into the hunting paragraph. Not a huge deal though. To me, the biggest value in the source isn't the hunting stats - it's the other stuff. Faceless Enemy (talk) 11:22, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Sure, sounds reasonable.-- Elmidae (talk) 12:56, 28 April 2015 (UTC)