by Maria Ruiz
Maria often shares stories with us about history, her travel all over the world, her dogs, and life.
We have a hanging basket on our front porch in front of one of the windows. We hung it when a couple of doves insisted that they wanted to lay eggs in my plants, a disaster for many reasons, especially since I need to water the plants daily in the summer. Everything we did to discourage them failed. They wanted our porch. We bought a plain basket, metal with a sphagnum insert, hung it, and waited.
The doves returned, looked at the empty basket, and started building a nest in the spider plant hanging next to it. I moved the spider plant, and they started building in the fern plant. I moved the fern, and the empty basket was the only one left. There it hung, alone and empty for a couple of weeks.
The first pair of doves that came spent many hours building a nest in it. Back and forth, stick after stick. Our cats sat at the window, watching every stick brought in. Then, mesmerized, they watched the coming and going of the adult birds throughout egg laying, the little naked birds emerging, and the final act of them leaving home.
Adult doves move in threesomes, two parents and maybe one of the children from last year.
The parents take turns sitting on the eggs or small babies. Or maybe the third one sits; I can’t tell the difference. Within a few days of mating, the female lays the little eggs. Always two eggs. The eggs are about an inch long and half an inch wide and take two weeks to hatch. At first, the parents did not move or fly away so we didn’t get a chance to see either the eggs or babies.
When both parents were gone, we had a rare opportunity to take pictures and look at the babies. They were growing fast. Every day they seemed twice as big. They started moving around and soon became too big to fit under the parent’s wing. One day, the babies were walking around the nest, walking on the edge, and flapping their wings. The parents were nowhere in sight. Suddenly, the baby took off flying. Three adults were sitting on a bush in the front lawn. Only one baby was left in the nest, and I hurried to get the camera. Too late. By the time I returned, the nest was empty, and all the doves flew away.
I learned a lot about doves over the next couple of weeks. Thank goodness for Google search. Birds are born naked and blind (altricial) or covered in soft down and ready to leave the nest in 1 or 2 days (precocial). Doves are altricial and they can’t eat seeds so both parents produce a liquid called Crop Milk which feeds the young. Whatever is in the liquid is potent. It seems like the babies double in size every day.
In the dove world, the news of a protected and completely furnished apartment seemed to spread quickly. The nest was empty for about a week. Then another set of doves flew in, poked around in the nest, then decided it was the perfect home for them, and they would not need to build their own nest. They did add a few sticks then quickly settled down and laid two little white eggs.
During winter, the nest remained empty. As soon as spring arrived, the doves followed. Today, one adult is firmly sitting on her eggs, and two other adults hang around and come in once in a while. The cats are keeping their eyes on the nest and birds, and I watch for a chance to see the babies. Soon, this set will fly off, and we’ll watch the whole thing again and again.
The basket apartment will remain, and maybe someday, I’ll be able to hang the spider plant and fern again.
All photos by Maria Ruiz.
When we lived in Dallas, I had a hanging basket of Swedish ivy on the covered patio and doves nested in it most of the years we lived there. I would stick a tiny bit of water in, at the edge of the plant to keep it alive until they left the nest.