Stock Dove ( Columba oenas )

I know some of my readers are "Columbaphiles" so this one is for them :-))

Recently we have had a couple of Stock Doves visiting.  Stock Doves are more a bird of the open country than villages and gardens.  Some people find pigeons difficult to identify.  The Stock Dove is smaller and more lightly built than a Woodpigeon.  A Wood pigeon has white showing both in flight and when perched, Stock Doves don't.  Of the feral pigeons the only colour variety it might be mistaken for is the "Blue Bar" or "Blue Rock".  They are larger and more robust have a white rump and two clear black bars across the wings.

This evening we went to a meeting of Penrith and District Red Squirrel Group.  PDRSG, like many other groups throughout the country are fighting hard to keep the Grey squirrels at bay.  Greys do at least £37,000,000 damage to forestry each year.  Unlike Reds they strip bark off the trees spoiling the timber and sometimes even killing the tree.  Greys also bring the problem of Squirrel pox.  They do catch the disease but there are no outward signs and they recover, anti bodies in the blood prove this.  More than half the Greys carry the virus which is almost always 100% fatal to reds.  They suffer a lingering death with lesions round the eyes mouth etc taking 10 to 14 days to die.

The talk was given by Dr Craig Shuttleworth, he has been researching Red Squirrel and Grey Squirrel populations in North America and Europe for thirty years, particularly the viruses for Squirrel Pox, adenovirus and Rota virus.  A particular point of interest was the concept of an orally administered vaccine based on mRNA technology.  This would be affordable for charities and individuals who had squirrels visiting the garden, it could be administered in feeders.  Sadly nobody is funding the required research.

PDRSG spend £180,000 a year giving Reds supplementary food, monitoring populations with trail cameras and employing 7 part time rangers to control any Greys that are seen/reported.