Turtle dove. The number of turtle doves in Britain has fallen by 88 per cent since 1970. RSPB

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Wednesday, 21 July 2010 It is the emblematic bird of sexual fidelity – and just like sexual fidelity itself, it is rapidly on the wane. The turtle dove, famed in folklore and literature as the creature which is always constant to its mate, seems to be on the high road to extinction in Britain, having dropped in numbers by 88 per cent since 1970. Known once just as the turtle (from the French tourtourelle), for both Chaucer and Shakespeare it was the bird which symbolised true love. In his dream-poem “The Parliament of Fowls,” Chaucer gives the male bird a passionate speech in which he says that if his lady died, he would take no other mate. In several of his plays, Shakespeare’s characters compare themselves to “turtles” when proclaiming their fidelity. In fact, the bird remained a symbol of sexual constancy through the Yuletide carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” right up to 1960s pop songs. But just as fidelity is not what it used to be, so turtle doves are vanishing fast, and have gone from much of Britain, including Wales and Scotland. Now, however, conservationists are asking farmers to help in a major research project to find out the reasons for the birds’ precipitous decline. The problem seems to be the disappearance of the wild flowers of our cornfields, whose seeds are the major source of food for the birds when they come to Britain to breed, having spend the winter in Africa. Most migrant birds are insect-feeders and the turtle dove is unusual in being a seed-eater. The principal seeds it has depended on in the past have been those of fumitory, a low-growing wild flower of crop fields, but intensive farming has done away with fumitory as it has killed off many other arable “weeds”. It appears there is no longer enough food for the birds to get themselves into prime breeding condition, so instead of raising perhaps three broods of chicks, as in the past, today they may be raising only one. …

Bird symbolising true love fading from the skies