DOVE DATA COLLECTION: Collecting data on dove… we 
explain the methods...ahead…on Passport to Texas.

This is Passport to Texas

The US Fish & Wildlife service works with state wildlife 
agencies to survey dove. One method involves TPW field 
staff driving set routes. Stopping at various points, 
getting out of the vehicle and documenting what they see 
and hear.

13— Along with that, we have our banding program, which is a 
nationwide banding program for mourning dove. But Fish & 
Wildlife Service also does a parts collection survey, which is where 
they send a random sample of hunters across the US envelopes, 
and they ask for wings from birds that they’ve harvested.

Owen Fitzsimmons, is TPW’s web-less migratory game 
bird leader. Regarding the parts collection…

22—We compile all the wings, and later in the year we get as 
many people as we can to go through all the wings in a week or 
so. We call that a “wing bee” kind of like a spelling bee. And we 
can look at the wings, and you can tell whether they’re a hatch 
year bird—meaning they were hatched that year. Or, they were an 
after hatch year bird—meaning they were probably breeding 
adults. And based on that, we can get age ratios; we can tell what 
age ratio was harvested. How many young birds were harvested 
versus adult birds.

And how is this information used?

12—We gather all this information from surveys to banding to parts 
collection surveys. We look at it from every angle. That’s ultimately 
Fish & Wildlife Service does to set the population parameters and 
look at possible changes in bag limits and season lengths and 
things like that. 

Tomorrow Dove banding.

The Wildlife Restoration program supports our series and 
funds Mourning Dove Density, Distribution, and Harvest 
surveys in Texas. [W-128-R-19]. 

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Total sound bite time:			0.47.0
Maximum Script time:			0:38.0	         	          Suggested show time: 85.0 = 1:25