African Collared Dove

Managed just one lifer during a week on Gran Canaria at the beginning of January. The endemic Blue Chaffinch and long staying Greater Yellowlegs both eluded me despite multiple attempts. But I did encounter

I'd seen reports of African Collared Dove on every trip to the Canary Islands but never been convinced of a pure one myself. Pale birds are quite frequent on several of the islands but all the ones I'd seen before had some darker feathering and, when able to check, lacked the diagnostic undertail pattern. 

I had no such queries about this one near the Charca de Maspalomas though. First of all it is uniformly pallid and the primaries, while slightly darker than the coverts, are pale grey and do not contrast much at all.

The undertail coverts are whitish (not grey) and, crucially, the black base to the tail feathers does not extend along the outer edges.

As a comparison, here is what I presume to be a hybrid feeding with some Collared Doves. Although obviously much paler than the other birds, the presence of many darker feathers and clearly contrasting dark primaries mean it is unlikely to be pure African .

There's another debate to be had about the origin of these birds. They occur naturally not very far away on the African mainland, but also have a domesticated form, 'Barbary Dove' (which is sometime given its own classification).