Here is my entry for #smap round 61 with a theme of pigeon/dove
Here is a white-winged dove common to Southern Arizona and Mexico.
Southern Arizona is their common breeding ground, they are easy to find nesting in trees and like many pigeons or doves in people's windows and house plant pots lol.
Besides their white winged edge and large size their blue eyeliner and slightly golden cheek feathers is a nice colorful way to identify them.
From a distance they look and sound quite a bit like a mourning dove.
But as you get closer to them you can see their white wing and they are noticeably larger than a mourning dove.
They often seem less skittish than mourning doves as well. They let you approach closely without instantly flying off like a mourning dove.
Here is a Eurasian collared dove that looks quite similar to mourning dove and white-winged doves. They are also fairly large like the white-winged dove. Apparently there is also an African collared dove in AZ as well that is slightly smaller but looks just like the Eurasian collared dove.
Their collar is their main identifying feature. In Arizona these are considered an invasive species that compete with native dove species and hunters have no limit on how many they can bag in a season compared to native species.
Now for a photobomber. This little house finch decided to steal the focus of my camera from the white-winged dove. Hey what about meeeee??? I want to be featured in #smap round 61 tooooo!!!
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)