Black-billed Wood Dove

Open encyclopedia reference

The black-billed wood dove or black-billed dove (Turtur abyssinicus) is a pigeon which is a widespread resident breeding bird in a belt across Africa just south of the Sahara Desert. This species is abundant in near desert, scrub and savannah. It builds a stick nest in a tree, often an acacia, and lays two cream-colored eggs. Its flight is quick, with the regular beats and an occasional sharp flick of the wings which are characteristic of pigeons in general, and it tends to stay quite low. Black-billed wood dove is a small plump pigeon, typically 20 cm in length. Its back, hindneck, wings and tail are pale grey brown, and the folded wings have dark metallic patches. There are two blackish bands on the back. The forehead, crown and nape are bluish grey, fading to whitish on the face. The underparts are pinkish, becoming whiter on the belly. The bill of this dove is black. When flying, black-billed wood dove shows chestnut in the underwing. The call is a persistent fluted coo-coo-cu-coo.

Wikipedia contributors, Black-billed wood dove; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T09:50:44.300260+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Turtur abyssinicus (Sharpe, 1902)

Name authority

(Sharpe, 1902)

Common name

Black-billed Wood Dove

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Aves

Order

Columbiformes

Family

Columbidae

Genus

Turtur

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classAves
9. orderColumbiformes
10. familyColumbidae
11. subfamilyTreroninae
12. genusTurtur Boddaert, 1783
13. speciesTurtur abyssinicus (Sharpe, 1902)

Close classified relatives

These entries share the source’s genus, Turtur. They are not necessarily the closest relatives established by molecular evidence.

Browse 279 records assigned to Columbidae.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=177218 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record. A suitable sourced image remains to be added.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:59R5S. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.