A male turtledove spends the summer storing grain in his nest against the coming winter. He fills the nest to bursting, and warns his mate not to eat any of the kernels. However, the kernels shrink and shrivel in the heat of the sun, and upon returning to his store, the male turtledove sees the lowered level of the grain and believes his mate must have eaten some. In a fury, he kills her. Once the seasons change, however, and the humidity causes the grains to return to their original size, he realises his mistake.
| Turtures appears in the following versions and secondary versions
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| Turtures is narrated in the following occurrences
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| Turtures appears in the following manuscripts
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The Persian version of this story is anomalous, and involves an extended preamble (the pair of birds are plagued by a hawk who eats their young, forcing them to move), advice from another bird about where to resettle, a drought (during which the husband leaves the wife supposedly for five days, but does not return for five months), accusations of infidelity (upon his return, the male bird mistakes his wife's disease-swollen body for pregnancy and kills her), and eventual suicide for the regretful male bird.