Turtle Doves are up in Western Europe, giving hope to the future of the UK population.
New figures just released show the number of Turtle Doves breeding in Western Europe increased by 40% from 2021 to 2024 – that’s 615,000 more breeding pairs. The rapid rise follows three consecutive years of a temporary ban on hunting across France, Spain and Portugal. This matters to the UK population of Turtle Doves, as these are part of this much larger Western European Flyway breeding population, all sharing a common migration route (or ‘flyway’) to and from their West African wintering areas.
So this rapid increase of the Western European population as a whole is good news for the future of Turtle Doves in the UK, and comes as efforts are being ramped up by farmers and landowners to provide them with the food and habitats to allow more successful breeding here.
Okay, we know they’re probably best known from the ‘12 days of Christmas’ carol. But actually Turtle Doves are only found in the UK over the summer months. They’re our only migratory dove, travelling 3,000 miles from West Africa up through Spain and France to breed here.
Turtle Doves have an orangey-brown and black patterned back, making them more colourful than the more common Collared Dove you see around gardens and parks. Their soft ‘turr-turr’ song, is how they got their name and was once a common sound in England between May to August. Now it’s mainly heard in parts of eastern and south-eastern England, their strongholds in the UK.
This welcome news from the Western European Flyway population comes after many difficult years for Turtle Doves. Their numbers have fallen dramatically, especially in north-west regions of Europe where there’s heavily intensified agriculture. In the UK, numbers have dropped 99% since the 1960s.
The main reason has been a loss of good quality breeding habitat here; particularly a loss of good feeding opportunities. Turtle Doves feed almost entirely on seeds and need a good supply to raise their chicks. They like low-level weedy plants such as chickweed and wildflowers which are found in field margins and short stubble fields after a harvest. Their preferred nesting sites are tall thick hedgerows or scrub. But the changes to the way we farm means this sort of habitat has disappeared from much of our countryside and now even those that do still breed here often raise fewer chicks because of a lack of food.
Their decline has also been exacerbated by unsustainable levels of hunting in western Europe, affecting the whole flyway breeding population. Before 2019, around one million Turtle Doves were being hunted each autumn in total in France, Spain and Portugal.
With urgent action needed, in 2018 the RSPB led on an international conservation action plan, working with experts from across the Turtle Dove’s range. They worked together to identify the main problems Turtle Doves faced and crucially the most effective solutions which would help numbers increase. This included getting the temporary ban of Turtle Dove hunting in France, Spain and Portugal from 2021.
This moratorium was the first stage of a hunting management system – “adaptive harvest management". This was developed to make sure that any future hunting of Turtle Doves is carried out at genuinely sustainable levels, allowing the whole flyway population to continue to recover in the long term.
Since the suspension of Turtle Dove hunting, there has been a rapid increase in numbers. An international team of scientists, led by the Spanish Institute for Game and Wildlife Research (IREC) has reported on this rapid recovery in Turtle Dove numbers as shown by data from the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme. Following the success of the first phase of the hunting management system, the European Commission has decided that all pre-determined conditions have been met to allow the next phase – a limited level of hunting, set to allow continued strong population growth, to be reinstated in autumn 2025.
With the temporary hunting ban having given Turtle Doves a chance to recover, the focus is now on supporting farmers and landowners to create the ideal breeding conditions here in the UK. This is where Operation Turtle Dove comes in – a partnership between the RSPB, Natural England, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and Fair to Nature. The dedicated team are working with farmers, land managers and local communities to restore habitat ideal for Turtle Doves. This means more seed-rich flowering areas and ponds as well as patches of thorny scrub and tall, wide hedgerows. But it’s not just on farmland – even gardens and local greenspaces can benefit Turtle Doves if they have the right habitat.
The RSPB is also working together with Tesco to reach hundreds more farmers in East Anglia and supporting them to work in ways which benefit Turtle Doves and lots of other birds such as Grey Partridges, Nightingales and Yellowhammers.
Dr Guy Anderson, the RSPB’s Migratory Birds Programme Manager, said: “The UK sits at the northern edge of the Western European Turtle Dove population, and so while we should certainly celebrate the rapid start to the birds’ recovery in the core of this continental scale population, the ‘recovery wave’ is expected to take slightly longer to reach us here in the UK.
“Nonetheless, an army of willing farmers, land managers, communities and volunteers are exactly what’s needed to harness this opportunity for Turtle Doves. But we also badly need the support of the UK Government in funding well designed and adequately resourced agri-environment schemes for the future so that farmers and land managers can be fairly rewarded for their efforts. Species like the Turtle Dove can be brought back from the brink and offer us all hope that when we can align the right science, collaborations and resources, we can restore nature together.”
UK Government schemes which support farmers to farm in ways which benefit birds like Turtle Doves are vital for their recovery. That’s why we’re urging the UK Government to spend more on nature-friendly farming, not less. Sign our petition and help grow a brighter future for our wildlife, our farmers and all of us.
