WHEN DOVES CRY

It all started with a birdhouse my brother-in-law made for my son.  I believe it was made from broken boards saved from tae-kwon-do practice.  It was so many years ago.

At one time, my home-office had a window A/C unit.  It was a pain to install so to be safe a cage was added.  When the window A/C was replaced by a wall unit, the cage became disused so one day I put the birdhouse there in hope some small birds would move in.  Instead, a pair of turtle doves started building a nest next to it.  The next few weeks I learned a lot more about turtle doves.

Both male and female turtle doves share hatching duty so it was not easy to tell which one is which.

Most of the time a bird would be atop the nest but one time I happened to be near the window and witnessed the changing of the hatching guard.

Close-up of a parent dove hatching the eggs.

One of the rare moments I witnessed a parent bird arriving to relieve the other.

About fifteen days after the first egg was laid, a chick came out.  I saw a parent bird open its beak for the new bird to poke inside to eat the regurgitated food.

A final happy moment of my bird-watching adventure.  This winter does not want to go away and one cold windy evening none of the parent birds were around.  Although my son told me he saw two chicks a day or two earlier, I saw only one and it was not sitting upright like when I first saw it.  Next day, the weather was even worse and the parent birds were absent again, a baby bird laid dead to the right of the birdhouse.  Such is life.  I took nothing but photos and did not try to interfere.  From what I was told, the birds will try to raise a family a few more times during the upcoming warm months.