Common Nature

From late last Summer, but I hope it'll be okay if I post it anyway. Spring is finally here (Great Lakes region, North America), and I'm excited about baby bird season, even if there are only eggs yet. Here're the last brood from last summer.

End of August 2018: In the little tree (yew?) by the front door, the doves are raising what are almost certain to be the last baby birds of summer. Doves can only feed two babies at a time, so they start early, and end late, getting in four or five, sometimes even six, broods per summer.

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Here's DoveDad (the male sits the nest during the day) on Aug 22nd. Both eggs were hatched by then, although I didn't know it at the time. I was very wary about getting too close and frightening him, since if he was sitting unhatched eggs, he might abandon them. He's giving me the "Oh @#&$! Does he see me?" look here.


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A week later, on Aug 30th. Both babies seem to be growing and healthy. The parents have put a lot of work into the babies at this point, and are unlikely to abandon them if I poke around the nest. The real danger here is frightening the babies, in which case they might fledge early, which juvenile birds will sometimes do if a predator finds the nest. These guys are just a few days too young for that to be an issue. I avoided showing much open interest in their tree after this, just in case.

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The evening of Sept 4th. I missed the older chick fledging, but here's the younger one, still in the nest. I was pretty sure he'd leave either tonight or tomorrow morning.

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15 minutes later.
He's technically left the nest at this point, but is still sitting on the branch beside it. You can see the nest just below him. I feel fortunate to see this, as one usually doesn't. Half an hour later he'd flown away, probably into the shrubbery along the front of the house, which seems a very popular spot for young birds to shelter for a few days as they learn to fly.

I kept seeing both the juvenile doves for several weeks afterward. They both got used enough to me that they'd panic when the door opened, see it was only me, then go back to what they'd been doing, which was neat. Slowly, they matured, and became indistinguishable from the other doves.