Turteltaube Cantabria

The European turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) measures about 26 to 28 centimetres in length, making it noticeably smaller and more slender than the wood pigeon or the stock dove. Diagnostic features are the rust-brown, black-scaled shoulder and upper wing coverts, the black-and-white striped neck patch and the white tail tip that becomes visible as the bird takes flight. Its song is a soft, purring turr-turr that used to be part of the summer soundscape of open farmland.

The species prefers semi-open, sunny and warm landscapes: light field copses, broad hedgerows, traditional meadow orchards, softwood floodplain forests and sun-exposed forest edges with shrubby understorey. Hazel, hawthorn and elder are typical breeding shrubs. The turtle dove feeds mainly on the ground, taking seeds from wild-herb fallows, field margins and tracks, ideally close to a drinking site. It is the only Central European dove that is a true long-distance migrant, wintering south of the Sahara in the Sahel zone, mainly in acacia dry forests and bush savannas.

The European population has collapsed. Pan-European common bird monitoring data show a decline of roughly 79 percent since 1980, and in Germany the breeding population fell by about 89 percent up to 2016, leaving around 16,500 breeding pairs. The IUCN has classified the species as Vulnerable on the global Red List since 2015. The main drivers are the loss of structurally rich hedge and field-copse landscapes through agricultural intensification, the disappearance of wild-herb feeding habitats, and high mortality from hunting and trapping along the Mediterranean flyways.

In Germany the turtle dove carries a year-round closed season under the Federal Hunting Act, so hunting it is excluded. It is additionally strictly protected as a European bird species under the Federal Nature Conservation Act, and its breeding shrubs may not be damaged. At EU level an International Single Species Action Plan has been in place since 2018. In response to the collapse a hunting moratorium was introduced in 2021 on the western flyway (Spain, Portugal, France) and in 2022 on the central-eastern flyway. The western breeding population recovered by about 25 percent within a few years. In spring 2025 the European Commission cleared the way for a quota-based reopening of hunting on the western flyway, but the year-round protection in Germany is unaffected. In the field this means: identify the turtle dove reliably against collared dove and stock dove, never shoot it, and actively support its habitat by maintaining hedges, field margins and traditional orchards.