Birds by family

• Accentors
• Auks
• Bitterns and herons
• Boobies and gannets
• Buntings
• Chats and thrushes
• Cormorants and shags
• Cranes
• Crows and allies
• Cuckoos
• Dippers
• Divers
• Falcons and allies
• Finches
• Flycatchers
• Grebes
• Grouse
• Gulls
• Hawks, vultures and eagles
• Hoopoe
• Ibises
• Kingfishers
• Larks
• Long-tailed tits
• Nightjars
• Nuthatches
• Orioles
• Osprey
• Owls
• Oystercatchers
• Parrots
• Partridges, quails and pheasants
• Petrels and shearwaters
• Pigeons and doves
• Pipits and wagtails
• Plovers and lapwings
• Rails
• Sandpipers and allies
• Shrikes
• Skuas
• Sparrows
• Starlings
• Stilts and avocets
• Stone-curlews
• Swallows and martins
• Swans, ducks and geese
• Swifts
• Terns
• Tits
• Treecreepers
• Warblers and allies
• Waxwings
• Wrens
• Wrynecks and woodpeckers

Pigeons and doves

There is no strict division between pigeons and doves, which share certain features, including small, rounded heads, small, slim bills with a small fleshy patch a the base, rounded bodies with dense, soft feathers, tapered wings and short, scaly legs, and cooing or crooning calls. The wild rock dove has long been domesticated and ‘escaped’ to live wild as the familiar town pigeon. There are many species all over the world.

Members of this family

This list only includes birds that occur regularly within the UK.

Collared dove This bird rapidly spread across Europe in the 20th century and is now common in most parts of the UK.

Rock dove This is the same species as the rock dove, originally kept to provide food, and the wild ancestor of domestic pigeons the world over. Feral pigeons come in all shades, some bluer, others blacker - so...

Stock dove Stock doves are similar in plumage and size to rock doves/feral pigeons. They are largely blue-grey with an attractive iridescent bottle green band on the back of the neck. In flight they show black...

Turtle dove The turtle dove is a dainty dove, smaller and darker than the collared dove and slightly larger than a blackbird. Its upperparts are distinctively mottled with chestnut and black and its black tail ha...

Woodpigeon The woodpigeon is the UK's largest and commonest pigeon. It can be tame and approachable in towns and cities.

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