What bird sounds like an owl?

The bird that sounds like an owl but is not one is most often a Mourning Dove. Its plaintive cooOOoo-wooo-woo-woooo is easy to take for an owl at first, and you can hear it across the continental United States. A hollower, hootier coo in town may be a Eurasian Collared-Dove. In the Southwest and Florida, the White-winged Dove hoots a phrase spelled who-cooks-for-you, and in western oak canyons and mountain forests the Band-tailed Pigeon gives a deep, owl-like whoo-hoo.

Listen: the Mourning Dove

The Mourning Dove's song is a plaintive coo, roughly cooOOoo-wooo-woo-woooo, given by males to attract a mate, and Wikipedia's account says plainly that it may be mistaken for an owl at first. The bird's name comes from the same sound: the mourning refers to how doleful the call is. When a male is showing his mate a possible nest site, he gives a shorter version, a single cooOOoo.

Doves also make a sound that has nothing to do with the voice. Their wings whistle, faintly in level flight and much more loudly on takeoff and landing, so a soft hoot followed by a fluttering whistle as the bird leaves is a dove giving itself away. Mourning Doves are found across the continental United States, though many of them migrate.

Other birds that hoot like owls

North Dakota columnist Mike Jacobs described hearing a winter sound he could describe only as a kind of cooing, or perhaps hooting, with a slightly hollow tone unlike the fuller coo of a Mourning Dove. He wondered about an owl, since a Great Horned Owl had been around his place and it was the season when owls set up territories, though he knew those owls are mostly nocturnal. The callers turned out to be Eurasian Collared-Doves, which have colonized small towns across his part of the state, often around grain elevators and feeders. The species reached the United States around 1975 and North Dakota by 1999.

The White-winged Dove of the Southwest, Texas and Florida has a drawn-out call that Audubon writes as hooo-hooo-ho-hooo or who-cooks-for-you and files under hoots (the phrase has a page of its own: who says who cooks for you). On spring mornings, streamside groves and desert washes ring with calling males, and the species also lives among mesquite and saguaros, in citrus groves and in towns. Most of the southwestern birds arrive by March and leave in September, though a few spend the winter in suburbs, and Florida's birds mostly stay all year.

In the West, the Band-tailed Pigeon earns the comparison outright. Audubon describes its call as a deep, owl-like whoo-hoo. It lives in oak canyons, foothills, chaparral and mountain forests, year-round mainly along the Pacific Coast and as a summer bird elsewhere, and it wanders in flocks to wherever food is plentiful.

How to tell which one you heard

• One swelling note, then three more, with a wing whistle when the bird flies: Mourning Dove.
• A hollower, hootier coo with a different cadence, from a small town or a grain elevator: Eurasian Collared-Dove. If you see it, look for the narrow black collar on the back of the neck and a square tail.
• A drawn-out who-cooks-for-you on a spring morning in the desert Southwest, Texas or Florida: White-winged Dove.
• A deep, double whoo-hoo from an oak canyon or mountain forest in the West: Band-tailed Pigeon.

If the hooting comes after dark from the woods, it may well be an owl after all, and that is worth a separate listen. In daylight, record a few calls and let Warble tell you which dove is doing the owl impression.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.