They have such haunting cooing sounds, and chill out on the ground quite a bit in my yard. Seems like a miracle the flimsy nests don't fall apart. Beautiful birds. One year I pruned a large limb off our redbud tree and as it was sitting on the ground I realized a nest was in the branches with two baby doves in it. I kind of panicked, then cut the branch with the nest off of the bigger branch on the ground, climbed a ladder under the redbud tree and duck taped the small limb with nest onto a larger limb in the tree. The babies stayed in the nest the entire time. I USED A LOT OF DUCK TAPE! The leaves on the cut branch died of course, and left them just slightly exposed, but the parents raised them and they fledged from the nest. Never made that mistake again :)
Wow! What a story. I do love to listen to the doves. These eggs unfortunately came to a tragic end. I was sitting outside when one of the doves flew past me all aflutter, then dropped something on the far side of the yard. I walked over there to look, and it was one of the eggs! It was partially opened, and the tiny bird inside was dead. So, I guess the parent dove was disposing of a baby that did not make it out of the egg. Within a day or so, the dove couple had abandoned the other egg, too, leaving it in the nest and just disappearing. After several days we moved the nest because they had constructed in on top of a couple of pillars for a pergola we meant to erect. When we noticed their nest we decided to wait until they were done with it to put up the pergola.
They have such haunting cooing sounds, and chill out on the ground quite a bit in my yard. Seems like a miracle the flimsy nests don't fall apart. Beautiful birds. One year I pruned a large limb off our redbud tree and as it was sitting on the ground I realized a nest was in the branches with two baby doves in it. I kind of panicked, then cut the branch with the nest off of the bigger branch on the ground, climbed a ladder under the redbud tree and duck taped the small limb with nest onto a larger limb in the tree. The babies stayed in the nest the entire time. I USED A LOT OF DUCK TAPE! The leaves on the cut branch died of course, and left them just slightly exposed, but the parents raised them and they fledged from the nest. Never made that mistake again :)
ReplyDeleteWow! What a story. I do love to listen to the doves. These eggs unfortunately came to a tragic end. I was sitting outside when one of the doves flew past me all aflutter, then dropped something on the far side of the yard. I walked over there to look, and it was one of the eggs! It was partially opened, and the tiny bird inside was dead. So, I guess the parent dove was disposing of a baby that did not make it out of the egg. Within a day or so, the dove couple had abandoned the other egg, too, leaving it in the nest and just disappearing. After several days we moved the nest because they had constructed in on top of a couple of pillars for a pergola we meant to erect. When we noticed their nest we decided to wait until they were done with it to put up the pergola.
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