When a Mourning Dove Visits: What Does It Mean?

Summary

Scripture does not teach that a dove, or any other bird, brings a message from someone who has died.
In the Bible the dove stands for the Holy Spirit, who came down on Jesus at his baptism “like a dove” (Matthew 3:16), and for peace, through the olive leaf Noah’s dove brought back to the ark (Genesis 8:11).
Scripture’s writers heard grief in the dove’s call: King Hezekiah wrote, “I did mourn as a dove” (Isaiah 38:14).
The mourning dove is a North American bird, found from southern Canada to central Mexico, and named for its low, mournful coo.
A grey dove in a European town is usually a collared dove, a woodpigeon or a feral pigeon, and an all-white dove is a feral pigeon.
Early Christians carved doves on graves as signs of the peace of the departed soul and the hope of the resurrection.
Grieving and remembering the dead is not wrong: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35), and Christian hope rests on the resurrection of the dead.

Scripture does not teach that a dove brings a message from someone who has died. In the Bible the dove stands for the Holy Spirit and for peace. The mourning dove, named for its sad call, is North American; a grey dove in Europe is usually a collared dove, a woodpigeon or a feral pigeon.

If a dove made you think of someone you have lost, there is nothing wrong in that. Christian comfort for the grieving rests on what Jesus told Martha after her brother Lazarus died: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).

Is a dove a sign from someone who has died?

No passage of Scripture describes the dead sending birds, or any other messengers, to the people they left behind. Doves appear many times in the King James Bible: as offerings, as pictures of beauty in the Song of Solomon, and in the laments of the prophets. None of them carries word from the dead. The dove that brings news is Noah’s, returning to the ark in the evening: “in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth” (Genesis 8:11).

The one time Scripture shows a sign from heaven in the form of a dove is the baptism of Jesus, and God explained that sign in advance. John the Baptist had been told, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost” (John 1:33). When Jesus came up out of the water, “he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him,” and a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16–17). That sign pointed to Christ.

From that scene the dove became the usual image of the Holy Spirit in Christian art, and Noah’s dove with its olive leaf became a picture of peace. Its other meanings belong to the dove as a Christian symbol.

Why does the Bible compare grief to the sound of a dove?

Scripture’s writers heard sorrow in the cooing of the doves they knew. King Hezekiah was “sick unto death” and was told, “thou shalt die, and not live” (Isaiah 38:1). After he recovered, he wrote down what that illness had been like: “I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave,” and “I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me” (Isaiah 38:10, 14).

Others in Scripture grieve in the same voice. A people waiting for rescue say, “We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves” (Isaiah 59:11). Ezekiel pictures those who escape a coming judgment “like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning” (Ezekiel 7:16). Nahum pictures women moaning “as with the voice of doves, tabering upon their breasts” as a captive is led away (Nahum 2:7). To taber is to drum, as on a tambourine, so the women beat their breasts as they moan. In each of these verses the dove’s moan is the sound of a person in pain, and Scripture records that pain without hushing it.

Why is it called a mourning dove?

The mourning dove is named for its call. The National Audubon Society’s field guide, adapted from Kenn Kaufman’s Lives of North American Birds, describes the song as a “Low mournful (hence its name) coo-ah, coo, coo, coo.” The name describes how the call sounds to human ears. It does not come from any link with death.

It is a bird of North America. “From southern Canada to central Mexico, this is one of our most common birds,” the guide says, found on “Farms, towns, open woods, roadsides, and grasslands.” Mourning doves usually nest in a tree or shrub, but “sometimes on a building ledge or other structure,” so a pair that keeps coming back to a porch or a window ledge may be nesting close by.

Two mourning doves together are often a mated pair. The male leads the female to possible nest sites and she chooses one; both parents sit on the eggs, and both feed the young. Audubon adds that “Members of mated pairs may preen each other’s feathers.”

Is the grey dove in Europe a mourning dove?

No. The mourning dove lives in North America, so a grey dove on a balcony in Italy, France or Spain is a different bird. Usually it is one of three birds that live alongside people in European towns: the collared dove, the woodpigeon or the feral pigeon.

Bird	Where it lives	How to recognise it
Mourning dove	Southern Canada to central Mexico	Mostly plain brown, black spots on the wings, long pointed tail with white spots
Collared dove	Asia and Europe; North America since the 1980s	Pale pinky-brown-grey, black half-collar on the neck
Woodpigeon	Woods, farmland and parks; tame in towns and cities	The largest of the three; grey with a pink breast, a white neck patch and white wing patches
Feral pigeon	Towns and cities	Light grey with bold black wing bars, or any shade from nearly white to dark

Of the three, the collared dove looks and sounds most like a mourning dove. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology calls it a “chunky relative of the Mourning Dove” that takes its name from “the black half-collar at the nape of the neck,” and its call is a “mournful koo-KOO-kook.” The bird came from southern Asia and spread across much of Europe in the twentieth century. Italian ornithologists traced its arrival in a 1986 study: first recorded in the north-east of Italy in 1944, it spread through the rest of the north in the 1950s, the centre in the 1960s, and on into the south and Sardinia in the 1970s and 1980s, though it still seemed to be absent from Calabria and Sicily. By 1986, they wrote, it lived in close contact with people, in towns large and small, provided they had plenty of trees.

The woodpigeon is the largest of the three, a bird of woods, farmland and parks. The RSPB, Britain’s bird conservation charity, describes it as “largely grey with a white neck patch and white wing patches,” and says that “Although shy in the countryside it can be tame and approachable in towns and cities.”

The feral pigeon is the grey bird of squares and rooftops. It descends from the rock dove, which the RSPB calls “the wild ancestor of domestic Pigeons the world over,” and its colours vary: “Feral Pigeons come in all shades, some bluer, others blacker.” The collared dove and the feral pigeon live where people live and nest on ledges or near houses, so a dove on a balcony, or one that flies in through an open window, is most likely looking for food, shelter or a place to nest.

Does a white dove mean someone has died?

A white dove does not carry a message from the dead. One seen in a town is almost always a pigeon, as the RSPB’s tip puts it: “Seen an all-white dove? It’s actually a Feral Pigeon.”

The link between doves and the dead is old, and Christians share it. Early Christians carved doves on their graves. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains that on a sarcophagus or other funeral monument the dove signifies “the peace of the departed soul, especially if, as is often the case in ancient examples, it bears an olive branch in its beak,” and also “the hope of the Resurrection,” both drawn from the story of Noah. Such doves appear “in numerous epitaphs of the Roman catacombs,” and “Two doves on a funeral monument sometimes signify the conjugal love and affection of the parties buried there.” Those carvings expressed the hope of the living for the person buried there: peace now, and resurrection to come.

What does it mean to find a dead dove?

Scripture gives no meaning to finding a dead bird, and nothing in it treats one as a warning. Jesus spoke about small birds dying to show how closely God watches over his people: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” He went on, “Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29, 31). A dead dove is a small loss that God sees.

What do the churches teach about the dead and about signs?

Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians all commit their dead to God and wait for the resurrection of the body. They differ over praying for the dead and over what happens to the soul before the resurrection.

Catholic teaching

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the Church “has honored with great respect the memory of the dead” and prays for them: “Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective” (958). On reading the future in signs, it counsels trust: “a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it” (2115). It rejects “All forms of divination,” among them “conjuring up the dead” and the “interpretation of omens” (2116).

Orthodox teaching

The Orthodox Church prays for the departed. The prayer for the departed published by the Orthodox Church in America asks God to “give rest to the souls of Thy departed servants in a place of brightness, a place of refreshment, a place of repose, where all sickness, sighing, and sorrow have fled away,” and calls Christ “the Resurrection, the Life, and the Repose of Thy servants who have fallen asleep.”

Protestant teaching

The Westminster Confession, the confession of Presbyterian churches, teaches that at death “the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies” (32.1). The evangelical author Randy Alcorn advises Christians to pray “to God ABOUT your loved one” (capitals in original), and not for a believer “who needs no prayer now.” Shauna Hernandez of his ministry, Eternal Perspective Ministries, answered a reader who asked about signs: “While there really isn’t any Biblical evidence for those in Heaven sending us signs, or even for God giving us gifts to remind us of loved ones, He does say to be thankful for all things.” She also wrote, “Sometimes I think God does indeed give us gifts that remind us of the loved ones we’ve lost.” She could not say for sure that the break in the clouds the reader had seen came from God, but added, “It could be the Lord giving you a gift as you think about your loved one who is now with Him.”

Is it wrong to think of someone you have lost when you see a dove?

No. Scripture does not treat mourning as a failure of faith. When Jesus met the grieving sisters of his friend Lazarus, “Jesus wept,” and those watching said, “Behold how he loved him!” (John 11:35–36). Among the Beatitudes is the promise “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). A study guide on death from the Orthodox Church in America says it plainly: “It is good for us to grieve and to mourn.” Thinking of someone you love when a dove lands nearby is remembrance. It is not divination.

Clarissa Moll, a Christian widow who writes about grief, says that mountains remind her of her late husband. Quoted by Eternal Perspective Ministries, she writes that she thinks of him “every time I see a mountain,” and that she takes the mountains as “a picture from God of HIS nearness and steadfast love” (capitals in original), not as a sign from him. A dove can work the same way, bringing the person you miss to mind and turning that memory into prayer to God for comfort. Catholic and Orthodox Christians also pray for the person who has died.

What hope do Christians have for those who have died?

Christian hope for the dead rests on the resurrection of Jesus. Paul wrote to believers in Thessalonica about members of their church who had died, “that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (1 Thessalonians 4:13–14). Paul does not forbid sorrow. He sets it beside hope.

The Catechism states the same hope: “just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day” (989). The Westminster Confession says that at the last day “all the dead shall be raised up” (32.2). Near its close, Scripture describes the world God will make new: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4).