common ground dove

Well this is exciting. This morning I thought I was taking a picture of a fledgling mourning dove because of it's small appearance, stubby short tail, and the orange bill. I did some research on the orange bill because all our mourning doves have black bills. I wanted to see if mourning doves are born with an orange bill, and found they aren't, I knew I had a different dove species here. I contacted, http://identify.whatbird.com for help, and posted my pics to the forum. It was verified as an adult common ground dove. They have short tails, pink feet and legs, and orange bills, where, the mourning doves have long tails, orange legs and feet, and black bills. The common ground nests and feeds low to the ground, while the mourning dove nests in trees and shrubs sometimes up to 50 feet off the ground. Interesting facts found on the site include, common ground doves are one of the world's smallest pigeons, and they are rapidly becoming less common in Florida due to ongoing habitat destruction.

Here are photos - the top few are the ground common dove and the bottom is the mourning dove.

The common ground dove is puffed out because it had a rough night. We have had torrential rains for 3 days and the birds around here have about had enough. Poor things. Don't even get me started on my fledglings.
here is a dry one a little later on in the day in a oak tree. this is the mourning dove with black bill and long tail