Greetings all!  It has been a bit sparse out of Intrigued as of late and for that my apologies.  Unfortunately, the production is probably going to stay a bit light for the remainder of this month and then into early August due to most of my time being devoted to helping my wife through her medical situation.  Looking forward to when this is all behind her – until then, my activities will take a backstage.  If there is lemonade in this basket of lemons is there might be a significant amount of wait time involved with all her appointments at Mayo.  Will have my trusty Surface to crank out what I can in those wait cycles – probably good for me to keep my mind busy on other things when she is away.

This being the first day of appointments and sure enough sitting in a waiting room waiting for Linda’s name to be called.  How about we turn our attention to a rather colorfully hued member of the Dove family.

The White-Tipped Dove is not a new bird to the blog.  This red-legged Dove was first featured back in February of this year (link here).  If you recall, that post featured an encounter at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge back in January of 2017.  Well, guess what, I had the pleasure of meeting likely another specimen of this species at the exact same location on our December 2017 trip.  Now, that may seem like an odd coincidence, but in truth, you are not going to find them in too many other locations.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of the White-Tipped Dove.

From a US perspective, these Doves run a very narrow region band.  Narrow in this context translates to the southern tip of Texas and… and .. well, the southern tip of Texas.  They extend further into Central America and a small push into South America and that is pretty much it.  No trip to Texas, no White-Tipped Dove for you.  As a public service announcement for my brother Ron, there is absolutely no reason for you to go to Texas …ever.   Hot, muggy, bugs, Armadillos (link here) and let’s not forget those prehistoric killers (link here).

Nope, no reason to risk life and limb just to get one measly bird (especially now that I have been able to catch up some ground on your California birds).  Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.  Unlike the first encounter with the White-Tipped, this one was willing to give me ample time to photograph it.  The previous one would dart out, peck at the ground, drop its feathers to moon me and then dash back into the underbrush chuckling the entire time.  This specimen wasn’t as easily amused and went about the daily business of nourishment allowing for some extra shutter time.  More importantly, it provided me the opportunity to pull the camera away and simply enjoy the elegance of this Dove.  Sure, the Rock Dove is relatively harsh in its color palette and the Mourning definitely doesn’t have anything much to flaunt, however, their southern kin enjoy a feathering ordained with a pretty pink to light purple dusting that would make any interior decorator jealous.  Even those bright reddish legs coordinate nicely with the highlights.

Clearly this Dove knows it stands out from the other Doves in the beauty pageant competitions and (according to Cornell) chooses to keep its nesting habits “extremely clean” – take that you filthy living Rock Pigeons ha. I should also mention their eyes are rather stunning.  Unlike the rest of their coloring, the White-Tipped sports a yellow/golden tone.  Having missed decent shots of the eye in the first encounter, spent extra time trying to get better shots of this feature in this set complete with my signature over the shoulder shot.

Well, Linda is heading back from her CT scan now and better wrap this up so we can get to the next appointment.  In closing should probably point out the correlation with the name.  The White-Tipped refers to the white coloring on the tips of their tail.  More pronounced when they have their tail fanned out (trusting Cornell on that as I have never seen them do that) as well as from below which I have had the displeasure of seeing per the multitude of moonings from the first encounter (shudder).

That’s a wrap, stay healthy everyone!