This afternoon at about 1:00 PM, while at work in the tower at BWI Airport, I looked out the window and saw a sight that I haven't seen since working in the tower at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport more than 5 years ago. If you haven't observed this migration, it's something interesting to see transpire. Although a scattering of birds will show up in the days and sometimes weeks leading up to the main wave, when the White-winged Doves truly arrive, they do so with a full frontal assault. From dawn onward, wave after wave of the birds fly by in loose flocks, from a few to more than a dozen birds. This will go on throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Usually by mid-day the flocks have settled into wherever they are at the time to rest up and feed, and then the migration continues again the following day. This goes on for the better part of a week before the flights thin out. In Phoenix this would often occur at about mid-March to the first of April.

Anyway, I digress; when I looked out the tower window I saw that familiar sight of a Mourning Dove sized bird (actually a little bulkier in body size) of the same overall coloration on the head and body, with dark primaries, secondaries and primary coverts, separated from the body color by a white crescent shaped patch on the outer portion of the main wing coverts. The rump was grayer than the rest of the back and the tail, and the tail was squared off, not pointed. Although the bird never fully fanned its tail in flight, as it turned slightly while flying over the terminal it opened it just enough to see white showing on the outer thirds of the outer rectrices; the central rectrices were the same color as the back, not the grayish color of the rump.

By the time I could grasp a pair of binoculars, the bird was already flying at a near dead away angle and I was never able to see the mark on the side of the head that should have been visible from a better angle. From the angle that the bird provided, I was able to clearly see the white patch that was on the upper surface of the wing. The patch extended from about the forward edge of wrist backward, where it curved inward towards the body beyond the trailing half of the upper surface. The bird continued to fly in a southerly direction until disappearing against a background of trees when more than a half mile away. It was flying a line between the tower and an area of major construction off I-97 at Quarterfield Road that is visible beyond the approach end of Runway 33L (Rumors of a Wal-Mart or Home Depot - Anyway, the construction is south of Rt 100).

I have seen hundreds, no probably thousands, of individuals of this species and I am absolutely certain of the identification of this individual. When first seen, the bird couldn't have been more than 150 feet away from me under ideal lighting conditions with the sun nearly dead overhead through broken thin clouds. The bird was at or just below eye level when first observed and settled to just below eye level during the majority of the time that it was observed, appearing below the horizon for most of the observation time which was a little less than a minute.

Yes, Phil, I will be making a formal write-up.

Ed Boyd
Westminster, MD