Mourning doves sing out a “woo-ooh-ooh-ooh” call that some people mistake for owls. Sometimes called “turtle dove” or “Carolina pigeon,” they are abundant in the Triangle area. Very easy to attract to your backyard feeder because they eat seeds almost exclusively and prefer to forage on the ground. So, cleaning up spilled seed under your feeders is pretty much their dream job.

I love these birds for the sounds and their adorable big eyes (even though their eyes look big mostly because their heads are stupidly small). My watercolor painting is about 6×8” on Strathmore 500 paper.