Passing through the park in the city centre on Monday this week, when the weather was summery and warm, I noticed this group of girls hanging out peacefully with a flock of doves.
A question for my readers from various corners of the world:
Do you call them doves or pigeons?
The internet tells me there's no difference:
They're all from the same big “Columbidae” family of birds. “Pigeon” is simply the name the French gave to them – from the Latin “pipio” for the peeping sound chicks made. Meanwhile, “dove” was named by Germans – for the bird's diving action. But there's no difference.
In Swedish we call them "duvor" (sing. duva, pl. duvor).
The German word is Taube; and Swedish is more closely related to German than to French.
Linking to Skywatch Friday and Weekend Street/Reflections.
I have a photo like that of my daughter with her friends in the park ... I sometimes wonder if they realised how special it is just to have people to hang out with:-)
ReplyDeleteMartine, for me it reminded my of my own youth, when one did just casually "hang out" with friends in a different way than one does half a century later!
DeleteThe birds in your photograph we call pigeons, principally woodpigeons. Smaller ones we call doves, like the collared dove. Whatever, I like to see and hear them all and there are plenty round here as we're not far from the woods.
ReplyDeleteJanice, looking up "collared dove" I don't think I've ever seen one of that kind here. My first instinct was to use the word "pigeon" in the title of this post, but then I started over-thinking, and looking things up, and things just got more confused rather than clearer!!
DeleteActually here, we have both doves and Pigeons. And they look totally different. At least that is what we call them.
ReplyDeleteThe Doves here hang out with people like your photos. The Pigeons stay way up high on buildings and rarely come down.
ReplyDeleteGinny, here I see them both on the ground and on the roofs and can't tell one kind (?) from the other.
Deleteour pigeons look like these and our mourning doves do not, maybe same family, I never thought about it. but we love the doves, the pigeons are ok but no love for them
ReplyDeleteSandra, I looked up 'mourning dove' and they seem to belong in North America. I should probably have used the word pigeon for those in this post.
DeleteIt's fascinating how language shapes our perception of these birds; whether doves or pigeons, they carry such quiet charm across cultures.
ReplyDeleteRo, it's certainly true that the words we use can sometimes make other people see rather different things in their minds!
DeleteThe birds were obviously hoping to be given some morsels of food, but I hope the girls didn't feed them - it's not really good for them unless one uses proper bird food.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as you say, in German we call this bird Taube. I can't see exactly how, according to what you have copied into your post, "dove was named by Germans for the bird's diving action" - Germans don't say "dove", they say Taube, and diving is tauchen in Germany. But I haven't really looked into the ethymology of the word.
When I speak or write English, I mostly use the term pigeon.
Meike, I do think the girls probably did feed them some crumbs of something, or the birds probably wouldn't have gathered around them like that I know it's not recommended to give bread to birds but lots of people do that anyway.
DeleteI have studied enough languages and language history to sense the connection between Taube (German), dove (English) and duva (Swedish). For example, changes in pronounciation between 't' and 'd' are very common. To linguists, these kinds of changes (both in consonants or vowels) follow easily recognisable patterns. - I originally wrote 'pigeons' in the title to this post, but then I started wondering if there is a clear difference between 'pigeon' vs 'dove'... Which took me on a wide detour of searches, without really arriving at an answer!!
Those look like pigeons, hoping for something to eat! I think doves usually have lighter or white feathers and tend to be more reclusive.
ReplyDeleteCarol, the comments I'm getting here seem to be giving me better answers than AI when it comes to common use of the two names! :)
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