One of the most evocative sounds of summer has to be the call of the Turtle Dove, perhaps along with the various warblers and the Cuckoo, all summer visitors that spend our winter in Africa. The warblers have a variety of songs and calls from the mildly melodic song of the Blackcap to the scratchy improvisations of the Whitethroat and everything in between; it takes time to get to know them and separate your Garden from your Sedge etc. The onomatopoeic Cuckoo of course cannot be mistaken for anything else (well, maybe the collared dove if you’re being careless).
The Turtle Dove’s coo, on the other hand, is distinctive, subtle, and soothing, at least to my ear. Actually, the sound it makes is less coo and more like the avian equivalent of a cat’s purr. And, that notion gives us a clue as to the bird’s name. Rather than being anything to do with turtles. The word turtle in this sense is onomatopoeic and alludes to the bird’s purring, or turring, sound. The Romans called it a Turtur, hence the species part of its scientific name, Streptopelia turtur, because that’s how it sounds. The genus name comes from streptos meaning “collar” and peleia meaning “dove”.
There were a couple of Turtle Doves feeding silently in an out-of-bounds area of RSPB Titchwell on my last visit. Photographed from the gate through a lot of heathaze.