John James Audubon regarded the Zenaida dove as common in the Florida Keys beginning as far east as the Cape Light-House [present-day Cape Florida Lighthouse]. “It never visits the Main. Its residence with us is shorter than that of the White-headed Pigeon [present-day White-crowned pigeon] by a full month.” Zenaida doves favored the interior of the keys, spending “the greater portion of its time on the ground, walking and running in search of food with lightness and celerity, carrying its tail higher than even the Ground Dove, and invariably roosting there.” For nesting purposes, the doves preferred open areas where they could scoop out a cup in the sand and then line it with “slender dried blades of grass, matted in a circular form, and imbedded amid dry leaves and twigs.”
Audubon also noted the redeeming effect of hearing the Zenaida Dove singing! “A man who was once a pirate assured me that several times, while at certain wells dug in the burning shelly sands of a well known Key, which must here be nameless, the soft and melancholy cry of the Doves awoke in his breast feelings which had long slumbered, melted his heart to repentance, and caused him to linger at the spot in a state of mind which he only who compares the wretchedness of guilt within him with the happiness of former innocence, can truly feel.” If the Zenaida dove was once common and softy crying in the Florida Keys, it no longer is. According to Cornell’s e-Bird system, no one has counted more than one Zenaida dove in all of the state of Florida (see eBird Checklist S103769544).