Miniature doves found in the sun

ON JUNE 20, 1631, ‘Barbary’ pirates raided Baltimore, taking 107 men, women, and children into slavery. It was the largest such raid on an Irish or British settlement since Viking times, writes Richard Collins

Europeans have called many things, besides pirates, after the Berber people of North Africa. There were Barbary wars in the early 19th Century. The “prickly pear”, a cultivated cactus, is known as the “Barbary fig”. The Barbary stag of the Atlas Mountains, Africa’s only deer species, has survived but the Barbary lion was hunted to extinction. Europe’s sole wild primate, the Barbary ape of Rock of Gibraltar fame, is actually a macaque.

On a visit to Tenerife, last month, I encountered another member of the Barbary club. Among the collared doves, cooing loudly in towns and the countryside, there were miniature ones, more elegant and tamer than their peers. These exotic little pigeons, I discovered, are known as Barbary doves. The blue tit of Tenerife is more colourful and a finer singer than our Irish one, but it’s not a distinct species. Is the Barbary dove, likewise, just a local variant of the Eurasian, or some other, collared dove?