The Eurasian collared dove, Streptopelia decaocto, seems ubiquitous: one of the park’s noisiest and most common species. But it wasn’t always so.

Birdwatchers were very excited when these doves nested in the UK, in Norfolk, for the very first time in 1956: the nest was heavily guarded and protected from disturbance. Within 20 years, though, collared doves had colonised every county in the British Isles, and had even reached the Shetland Islands and the Outer Hebrides.

Now it is the seventh most frequently seen species in British gardens and the population is believed to have has reached almost a quarter of a million breeding pairs.

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