A mother’s love

In the heat of summer and with the sounds of an approaching storm the mother bird is dedicated to her clutch.

Squawking kid

The Mourning Doves hanging out with the little ones. Notice the one parent with their eyes closed. Probably thinking ” Quiet already kid” ???

First Feeding

This male mourning dove feeds his hour old hatchling for the first time. He also is sitting on a second egg, which hasn’t hatched, yet. The adult’s head bobbed up and down during the feeding; the hatchling following the movement. The body of the adult was heaving as well; regurgitating. I have read that this regurgitation is the production of “pigeon’s milk” for the youngling.

No Room at the Inn

I had a very nice fairy garden set up on some shelves on my back porch this summer. It was made up of geodes, Dept 56 fairy tale house, and fairy figurines. One day, I noticed the fairy figurines had been tossed off the shelf and replaced instead with a small grouping of sticks. I threw the sticks off the shelf, thinking my husband had did this as a joke. But he said he had no idea how the rearrangement occurred. Until the next day, we noticed that the fairies were gone once again and this time you could tell a nest was being built amongst the geodes. The next morning, my husband woke me up and exclaimed, “I know who is building the nest!” And I got up, looked outside and saw two mourning doves working together; one sitting and forming the nest and the other going and getting twigs. They were so beautiful and the nest so perfectly situated next to the fairy house, that we decided to let them stay. I did some research and found out who the female and male were. In this picture, the male had just given the female a branch to add to the nest. She searched amongst the other twigs and then, very carefully positioned the twig into the nest. It was fun & interesting to see them work together. They would work for awhile in the morning and then, disappear for the rest of the day, returning the next day to continue. They did this for about 4 days and then, finally stayed on the nest, after laying 2 white eggs.

mourning dove year 2

Are we ready to take flight?

These 2 baby Doves are thinking of taking their first flight into the world….

Mourning Dove sitting on her nest.

While visiting the lab earlier this spring, I observed this Mourning Dove nesting above the entryway to the visitor’s center. It appears she built her nest over an old robin nest?

Cutest Baby

I had a couple of baby mourning doves in a nest above my doorway, they left the nest and a couple of days later I seen them in my backyard.

Dove Love

He couldn’t get close enough to her! (He’d inch closer, she’d inch away; he’d inch closer, she’d inch away….)