| Sedentary species. Pale grey with a characteristic black bar around neck. It colonised Europe from Turkey where it arrived in the late 19th-century from southern Asia. It has nested in Catalonia since the early 1980s, and has expanded extremely rapidly throughout the country, especially in coastal areas and the Lleida plains. Highly associated with humans, it builds its nests in trees in urban parks and gardens and lays several clutches a year. It feeds on the remains of food, seeds and invertebrates on the ground. Its guttural song, formed by three syllables ("du-duuuuuuu-du") is one of the few to be heard in the height of summer, when temperatures reach their maximum and many of us take a siesta. |
