Wood Pigeon Call MP3s
A ready-to-use Wood Pigeon audio track for field use, built for practising calls, checking decoy response, or simple species recognition.
Also known as
Recordings (5)
About this species
Around 42 cm in length, the Wood Pigeon (Columba palumbus) is a member of the Columbidae (pigeons and doves): the largest European pigeon, grey with a bold white neck patch and white wing-bars. It ranges across woodland, parkland and farmland, often in large feeding flocks.
Its soft, husky five-note coo, 'coo-COOO-coo, coo-coo', drifts from woodland all summer. It gorges on grain, oilseed rape, clover, acorns and beech mast, often raiding crops in flocks. Outside the breeding season it forms huge flocks that descend on crops and woodland. Abundant and adaptable, it ranks among the most widespread quarry species of the European countryside.
Legal use
The Wood Pigeon is treated very differently from most quarry species: in the UK it is one of the most heavily shot birds in the country, but not as a protected game species with a fixed open season — instead it is controlled under general licences (such as GL42) that permit shooting for specific purposes like preventing serious damage to crops, with tens of millions taken annually, provided licence conditions such as trying non-lethal deterrents first are met. Under the EU Birds Directive the UK and other member states are also required to protect wild birds during the breeding season, so this pest-control framing, rather than a traditional season, is what actually governs most Wood Pigeon shooting. Similar agricultural pest management applies across much of continental Europe, where it is also a widely permitted quarry or pest species under national hunting law, though the legal mechanism (licence vs. ordinary game season) varies by country. Because general licence conditions (permitted purposes, methods, and any local restrictions) vary by country and can change annually, check current requirements before use and see our full country-by-country disclaimer.