2023 Nesting Season Overview Part Two

White-Winged Dove with Fledgling

This is an adult White-winged Dove with her 7-10 day old fledgling located in a cherry plum tree at a residential acreage in southwestern New Mexico.

White-winged Dove nest failure

We have been watching a White-winged Dove nest since March 9th. We last saw her at 3:32 and now at 4:27 the nest was damaged and we found a bloody egg on the ground. What predator do you think would do this? Maybe a squirrel?

Poor poor Mrs. Dove!

We just went outside to see Mrs. Dove and she was gone! The nest was damaged and there was a bloody egg on the ground. Poor Mrs. Dove!

Mrs. White-winged Dove

White-winged Dove nest

White-winged Dove nest in our front tree

White-winged Dove building a nest

Sunning Doves

Sunning is when birds lie on a fence or the ground and spread one (or both) of their wings and their tail out. Birds often do this on sunny days. A bird that is sunning may look injured or even dead, but this is normal bird behavior and helps rid the bird of parasites like mites and lice.

Mother and baby dove eating suet and need feather ID

Mother and baby dove eating suet. The baby clung to the suet cage and was swinging around. What a silly baby dove.

The feather was found at Paul D Rushing’s Chain of Lakes when we were going to visit the (empty) mockingbird nest. It is a blackish brownish white feather. It was about 5” long and pointy.

White-winged Dove eating suet

I didn’t know that doves ate suet. Google says that they don’t. We got some new birdseed with milo, millet, and basically no sunflower seeds. (the birds don’t like it) We normally buy Economy Mix Wild Bird Feed Bird Seed Blend. It has black oil sunflower seeds, striped sunflower seeds, milo, millet, wheat, and corn. The birds love it. We get white-winged doves, mourning doves, Eurasian collared doves, house sparrows, European starlings, cardinals, house finches, and blue jays. Most of the birds are eating suet now. We are getting the good birdseed today so the birds will come back.

Doves

Lots of dove pictures I found.

Doves in our yard

Doves in our yard.

Just coming for a visit…or two or three.

He comes multiple times a day and chases the House Sparrows away from the feeder. Was also seen gathering sticks for a nest.

My best photos yet!

Today i got to get up close and personal to these beautiful birds!

Mating or Fighting?

Couldn’t tell if they were mating or fighting. They were on top of each other and lots of wing flapping and hitting together, but didn’t see any intercourse… They still could’ve been mating just maybe i didn’t see? I was only a couple feet away from them sitting on the grass, so i don’t know if i could’ve missed it or not.

Dove nest

Male dove

white winged dove

Baby doves going to rehab

dove nest

female white-winged dove

White-winged Dove nest

White Winged Dove

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Cornell Lab of Ornithology