Local Weather Forecast
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Complete Forecast for  May 17 2008

By STEVE KNIGHT
Outdoor Writer

BROWNWOOD - Dove season is five months away and most Texas hunters won't give it a second thought until August rolls around.

But if you have walked out the door early in the morning or been to the central portion of the state anytime in the last couple of months, it is hard not to notice the birds. They are everywhere, and those that aren't cooing in search of a partner have long been paired up.

"It is really a latitudinal thing," said Jay Roberson, dove program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "It starts earlier in the South than in the North. We have documentation on nesting in every month of the year in Texas. I live in Austin and I see them pairing in my backyard in January."

Roberson said he also found doves pairing on a trip to Stephenville in January, and had a friend in Lubbock report pairs as early as February.

Mourning doves and the occasional Eurasian dove are the only doves heard in East Texas. The mourning doves' soft cooing can usually be heard about first light in the morning and late in the evening.

In other areas of the state, whitewings can also be heard. In staking out a territory and finding a mate, the whitewings seem much louder than mourning doves.

With a dry spring in the central portion of the state, Roberson said mourning doves should be well along in the nesting process.

"The general rule is that the warmer and drier the better for nesting success. They tend to be a warm-desiring species," the biologist explained.

In the dove world the male and female build the nest together. The male delivers the twigs, hands them over the female's shoulder and she places them in the nest.

"That may take two or three days and then she lays one egg one day and another the next. The eggs are 15 days in the nest, always with an adult in attendance. She tends it at night and he does it in the middle of the day so the eggs are never exposed and the chicks are never exposed," Roberson explained.

Once the chicks fledge it takes another 15 days before they leave the nest, making the courtship to empty-nest situation about a 30- to 32-day process.

"Then they recycle. The female starts another nest while the male has the young off the nest beginning on day 10," Roberson said.

He added that a pair of doves is capable of pulling off five or six broods a year, but the average is about three. The time it takes to re-nest depends on whether it comes after a successful attempt or if something happens.

"It may take a day or two up to a week. If the eggs are lost and the young are lost, it may take a longer period of time. It may be a hormonal production thing," Roberson said.

While complete information on nesting pairs is missing because of the inability to track the birds throughout an entire year, it is known that a pair will remain together throughout nesting season unless one is killed. If that happens the other may not find another mate for the remainder of the season or for a delayed period.

Annual nesting success is extremely important for dove because their life expectancy from their hatching day is 18 months on average. Most, Roberson explained, die in their first year.

One sample technique is through hunter harvest each fall.

"The hatch makes up at least 50 percent of the harvest each year. Some years it is 75 percent," Roberson said. In comparison, the young of the year make up only 10 percent of the population in a species like sandhill cranes.

"So (dove nesting success) is extremely important. The population is built on and exists because of annual recruitment," Roberson said.

Because of the conditions, Roberson is expecting early nesting success across much of the state. So when hunters do start to notice on Sept. 1, they won't be disappointed.