Doves are strict vegetarians and exclusively seed eaters, with 99 percent of their diet seeds. They rarely feed on insects or other items, an unusual practice among birds, who usually eat high-protein foods such as insects, at least while they are young. Quail, turkeys, ducks and songbirds eat insects and often animal matter exclusively during their first days of life. Doves, however, produce high-protein food from grain in the form of pigeon milk.
Doves prefer a wide range of seeds.
They find food by sight or by seeing other birds feeding and they remember where they have found choice foods. Favorite foods are determined by taste, and the size of the seed is not an important factor. Choice foods include many species of wild and cultivated grasses as well as weeds, including euphorbias, crotons, ragweed, amaranth and many others. Legumes are almost never choice dove foods although doves do eat peanuts, peas. Doves do not tend to eat acorns, or seeds of clovers, chufas, partridge peas, vetches and other plants.