'Bird of Peace' my shiny, white hiney ...

Doves are thugs. No kidding.

My dad had told me some stories of the Eurasian collared doves that regularly beat-up on everything from grackles to jays at his backyard feeders when my folks lived in West Texas.

Turns out our native white-winged doves are just punks with plumage as well. Dove hunting season in Texas starts in about two weeks, by the way. I'm just sayin' ....

I've noticed over the past couple of weeks that when our resident white-wingeds fly down to the feeder, other birds take off. Titmice and chickadees are tiny, and commensurately skittish. But jays and cardinals also give way.

This afternoon, one dove (I'm pretty sure he was a gang member) beat the bird snot out of two others. He left one of the other birds in serious (if not critical condition). It hunkered down next to the English ivy near our fence. When the bully bird approached it again it -- I kid you not -- tried to limp away.

Doves have hackles, too, like dogs. And when they're upset, they raise them. At least today's bully did.

Papa described to me the way a collared dove would sidle up to a feeder and then: "thwack!" with its wing, pummel some other poor bird out of the way. The dove would do this repeatedly until the other bird left.

What I saw today was one particular bird who was not content to intimidate others away from an easy meal, but actually pursued them -- in the air and on the ground. After one particularly violent tussle beneath our oaks that featured multiple wing batterings, the other two birds did their best to stay out of the batterer's way.

Historically, white-winged doves were endemic to the Lower Rio Grande Valley and points south. After killer freezes in the 1980s that destroyed the citrus groves they had colonized, they expanded their range northward. In 10 of the past 11 years, there have been more white-winged doves in upper South Texas than in the Valley.

In 2000, Travis County (which is outside the South Texas ecological zone) had more than a quarter million of the birds, while all of West Texas had only a bit more than 30,000.

According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the majority of nesting occurs within urban and suburban environments.

"The nesting white-winged doves seem to prefer the older more established residential neighborhoods with large live oak, pecan, and ashe trees. This may be due to better protection from predators and a consistent food and water sources due to watering of lawns and bird feeders," opines the fact sheet on the department's Web site.

I guess that's us.

For my part, I'd be happy to see fewer white-winged doves and more mourning doves, the latter native to all 254 Texas counties and an altogether gentler animal.

So, how did the dove come to symbolize peace? The Azerbaijanis have a charming legend to the point, but in Western culture it's probably due to the story in which a dove was released by Noah after the great flood.

In the Bible story, Noah first set loose a raven, which flew back and forth, back and forth. There is no mention of the raven returning. He then loosed a dove, which returned to the ark.

"And having waited yet seven other days, he again sent forth the dove out of the ark. And she came to him in the evening, carrying a bough of an olive tree, with green leaves, in her mouth. Noe therefore understood that the waters were ceased upon the earth." (Gen. 8:10-11)

So here we have the answer to two longstanding metaphors: the olive branch as peace offering (as in "He extended an olive branch.") and the dove as the symbol of God's cessation of hostilities against mankind.

But I think there's more to this story. Remember the raven that didn't come back? I'll betcha anything the raven found the olive branch and the dove mugged him.