Gun Dog Forum

In some European languages as German and Spanish, there is no distinction.

In German, "die Taube" is any bird of the family Columbidae.

Likewise, "la paloma" in Spanish is universal for any cooing bird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUc0R8bbWQE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3NJ8D5gPWY

About a quarter pound.

greg jacobs wrote:About a quarter pound.

Greg's answer is about as good as any. Generally pigeons are larger than doves. But the common Columba livia aka. "barn duck", "flying rat" is technically called a rock dove.

A pigeon is a dove but a dove is not always a pigeon.

How you spell it

A pigeon is just one specie of dove that officially is a Rock Dove.

I wondered about using dove's like pigeon's. Had some get into my chicken pen and caught them and moved them into a big pen in the machine shed. Got 14 then they had three baby's. Then some escaped. Down to 8. They don't breed as fast as pigeon's but their small size makes them easier to handle. Oh, they are those ring neck dove's, so season, limit or anything. Invasive species. Haven't used them yet though. Like to find a way to get them back into the pen but doesn't look like I'm gonna make it. I prefer my feral pigeons for traiing over homer's for no other reason than my ferals are a lot smaller and easier to handle. the Ring Neck doves are smaller still. Not sure how they would come off the ground. Watching the wild ones around here they seem to come off pretty slow. Might be easy for a dog to catch if it tried. Still thinking about them but gonna get the numbers up again first.

Catching them in a net in the chicken pen, they are pretty fragile and not particularly strong, wing beat is really soft compared to the pigeons. And they don't seem to struggle as hard in my hand as pigeons. pretty small birds!

All of the domestic varieties of pigeons; homers, tumblers and the fancy varieties, have all descended from the rock dove (Columb livia).

Here in Oregon the feral pigeon is refereed to as a rock dove. Well not by everyone, I call them pigeons. never held a wild pigeon in my hand so no clue how big they are. My feral pigeons are a lot smaller than my homer's. Always found homer larger. years ago in the older smaller release traps, I had a number of homer's die in hot weather in them, seem's it was tight enough they would suffocate. A dove on the other hand is really small in comparison and when taking off don't make as much noise with their wings as any pigeon. So I'm told, they are all in the same family and you can see it but I've never seen a dove the size of even a feral pigeon. The one's I have are ring neck doves, really Eurasians. They are bigger than morning doves. about the same difference as feral and homer's.

I've eaten feral pigeons and young one's are pretty good. Never tried a homer but have eaten a bunch of morning doves in the past, really good. Haven't tried a Eurasian yet. Comparing a dove to a pigeon is about like comparing one of Budwieser's horse's to a Shetland pony. They really are both horse's!

Pigeons are doves. Kind of like what is the difference between citrus fruit and oranges.