Porch doves

When we got home from the hospital, we found a dove camped out in the birdfeeder on our balcony. I thought that this was pretty cool, considering one of the names I liked for the baby was Jonas, which means dove. A couple of days later, another one showed up and they cooed and flew back and forth from the feeder.

Note that these are also the doves I had to persuade my brother not to shoot at with the dart gun.

Anyway, last night David and I went out on the balcony after Elliott fell asleep and had a beer and just caught up. We chatted and at some point I looked over my head and noticed our dove, with its tail hanging over the side of the feeder. David looked up and saw it too, and asked if it was alive since it hadn't scared off when we came out. He tapped the bottom of the glass feeder and the bird didn't flinch.

He grabbed one of the dowels I use for container gardening and nudged its tail, and it still didn't budge. He climbed up on one of our patio chairs, and found this:


I checked on them this morning, and the little mama is still there, on her blue glass nest with plenty of sunflower seed shells. I have no idea how much actual food is still in there, but I'm not going to mess with her to refill it. How cool is it that these doves made their home for their new babies outside of our home for our new baby?