It’s been a pretty dramatic few weeks on our front porch, friends. I alluded to it last week when it became apparent that Gladys the mourning dove finally hatched her eggs, but that was neither the beginning nor the end of the odyssey. As we’ve now reached the end, I guess it’s time to talk about it.
The beginning, of course, was when Gladys and her mate found a very exposed hanging plant on our porch and decided to make a nest by throwing four sticks in there, as doves do. They are really quite terrible nest builders. This is not my opinion; even among bird experts, doves’ nests are described as “flimsy” and “lousy.” But whatever. The hanging pot was a pretty good readymade nest in itself, and maybe the metal chicken hanging nearby made it seem like a nice, homey place.
(that’s actually Gary; there is a bird sitting on those eggs 24/7 but apparently the male sits during the day and the female takes night duty)
There was a guard on the power line above watching over everything,
but I noticed that he would go home for the night, so that in the evenings Gladys had to fend for herself (this part is a little confusing because of the day/night shifts, but it still shakes out that Gladys was there with no guard; that’s probably girl Gladys up on the wire).
One morning the guard duty was apparently sleeping on the job, because I came out to the porch to see this:
and was extremely alarmed; was Gladys eating one of her eggs? I sent a photo to Benny and we determined that she was probably actually trying to protect the egg from a blue jay or some other predator. By the time I got home in the evening, all eggs were back under Gladys.
Then, you know, came the blessed event:
and that was really cool, and we saw the gross feeding ritual where the baby doves stick their heads in the mom’s mouth and she barfs this white foam up for them.
Things seemed to be going well, though one was a lot smaller than the other. Gladys was protecting that one more, trying to keep it warm underneath her while the other one was drying off and stretching out,
but she was also starting to leave them alone in the nest for periods of time. I came home from work one evening and only saw one head pop up. The runt was dead.
Benny did some more research online and found that this was fairly normal, and we decided to leave the dead baby alone in the nest rather than disturb the surviving one and his mom. We also decided that the surviving one was a dude and that his name was Gary Shazzbat Jr.
Benny read that pretty soon things were going to get real hairy, and Gary Shazzbat Jr. was probably going to flutter down to the ground any day now and would have to hide in a bush so predators wouldn’t get him until he learned how to fly. He wasn’t going to stay in his nest? Much like the feeding ritual, nature was not following what I had learned in cartoons.
On Saturday, we didn’t see him in the pot so we started looking on the ground for him, but then I noticed he was in another hanging plant a few feet away. So… he was flying already? There was no other explanation for it. Gary Sr. came around and made some noise about it. I don’t speak dove so I’m not sure what it was about. Probably a parent-teen dispute. “You can’t live on your own yet, son.” “I DO WHAT I WANT.”
At this point we decided that he should be renamed Angel Witch, after the song “Angel Witch” by the band Angel Witch that we heard on the radio that afternoon. This premature flying and acting like a big independent boy seemed to merit it.
Yesterday Benny was wondering if he should make a nice top hat for Angel Witch with a purple feather in it so that we would be able to tell him apart from the other doves. He was growing up really fast and wasn’t going to be hanging around in that pot much longer and we wanted to say hi to him if he ever came back to visit.
And then, this morning, Benny said that he didn’t see Angel Witch, and Gladys and Gary were each in a pot looking around for him.
I think you know where this is going.
I found Angel Witch on the ground below the first pot, in one piece but not alive. It seemed like some sort of dumb demi-predator like a cat or jay had attacked him for sport or something. The scene was not gruesome, just sad. I did not take photos.
Benny didn’t have to work this morning so he made a sassy little coffin for Angel Witch and his brother and filled it with flowers and kumquats.
We buried him in the front flower bed and that’s that.
And now there is a new mourning dove making a nest in the palm tree near the porch and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to handle this all over again.
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