Seeds comprise almost all of their diet, including waste grains from cultivated fields.  Mourning doves usually feed on the ground and ingest grit to help grind seeds in their gizzard. Mourning doves do not scratch or probe the ground, but they will use their bills to whisk away leaves or other light ground litter.

Typically, doves have a short life span and a high population turnover in which about 70% are lost annually to predation, disease, and starvation.  Mourning dove populations normally increase from spring through late summer with populations reaching their highest numbers in September and October. The numerous broods help keep dove populations at a respectable number of around 425 million birds.

Doves do not waste time.  It takes a little less then a month for them to build a nest, brood two eggs, and care for their young.  After fledging their young, the adults repeat this process until the breeding season ends about late August.  Many ornithologists believe that a pair only mates for a season and splits up at the end of the breeding season.  Some believe that occasionally, these pair bonds persist for more than one nesting season. 

Doves begin pairing in early spring.  The cooing calls and gliding, spiraling flight of males are the first signs of the breeding season, with the peak typically occurring in April. The nesting season is from mid-May to late August.  Typically doves have 2 or 3 broods during the nesting season, but occasionally up to 6 broods have been reported. Doves require this high reproductive capacity to maintain their population.  In rare instances, nests can be located on the ground, but most are located in shrubs or coniferous trees up to 50 feet.  Their nests are flimsy and saucer-like, usually made of crossed sticks and twigs lined with fine materials.  Sometimes they nest in the deserted nest of another species.

Dove eggs are white, a little over an inch in length, with two to three eggs per nest.  Clutches with three, four, or more eggs are likely due to brood parasitism by another mourning dove.  Incubation begins immediately after the first egg is laid and continues for 14 days after the last egg is laid. Typically, the male incubates most of the day, and the female incubates the remainder of the day and night.  The pair feeds crop milk to newly-hatched squabs for about 3 to 9 days, followed by regurgitated seeds from the parent’s crop.  When squabs are about 9 days old, the female dove begins preparing for the next brood, and the male takes over feeding responsibilities.  Fledglings leave the nest from 12 to 15 days after hatching, but continue to rely on the male for feeding.  At 15 days old, they are fed only seeds.  They become completely independent by 20 days of age, and are reproductively mature at 90 to 100 days old.  Therefore, young born early in the nesting season may reproduce that same year.  A nesting pair of doves producing 2 eggs per brood has the potential of producing 4 to12 young, not counting what their first-year young might produce.