See what I did there? I wanted to illustrate one of my biggest pet peeves committed by publishers and writers - not capitalizing bird names. It drives me (and lots of other birders) nuts since in our opinion, these are proper nouns and should be capitalized. And yes, I know what the style guides say! In this example, this is a dove with white wings, hence "white-winged dove", but you probably got excited thinking I meant a real "White-winged Dove", which is a rare visitor to Ontario. Sorry to disappoint you...
But seriously, this is a pretty cool looking bird that I've been lucky enough to see most days for the past couple of weeks. Interestingly, the white primaries are not symmetrical on both wings, which is often the case when a bird has some sort of pigment issue like this. There's a lot of confusion out there with regards to birders and terminology to describe partially white plumage (e.g. leucistic, albino) and I'm not up-to-speed on this topic. David Sibley probably summed it up much better than I can here.
Well, if you came here looking for a White-winged Dove in the winter in Ontario, sorry to disappoint you, but don't despair, look over there!
