In the Noah’s Ark story, what did the dove return with?

In the Noah’s Ark story, the dove returned with an olive leaf.

Genesis 8:11 says Noah sent out a dove, and it came back in the evening carrying a freshly plucked olive leaf. This showed Noah that the floodwaters had receded from the earth. He later sent the dove out again, and it did not return, indicating that the bird had found a place to rest.

The olive leaf became a widely recognized symbol of peace and the end of conflict, although that modern symbolism extends beyond the immediate biblical scene. The earlier bird Noah sends is a raven, which Genesis says went back and forth until the waters dried.

A common mix-up is to answer “a branch” or “a twig.” Those descriptions capture the general image but are less precise than the biblical wording. The specific object is an olive leaf, often described in translations as a freshly plucked olive leaf.