Time for a catch up and pic posting!

Playing catch up again.  Thought I post these up already. Its of the new baby doves that hatched during early summer. June that is. One is a male peach colourd, the other is a speckled with white female.
Sadly the female died recently after the holidays of the dreaded egg binding. I discovered the problem too late to really save it.  I tried cracking the egg and she seemed to improve for a while but the stress and probably the bacteria got to her.  Had I discovered the problem early on I would have saved her like I did with another female in the same situation.  The new male is happily wooing the females especially my one handicapped dove who can’t really walk but can fly just fine. He is always bringing her gifts of twigs for her favorite hanging nest, cooing and nuzzling her with affection. Its so cute.

My oldest dove who is about 30 years old is showing signs of sore joints mostly in winter. Going to have to figure out what natural thing I can feed him to make him more comfortable.

Going back to the pics, these were taken in June in their outdoor summer cage.
Enjoy!

Female in the background while the male is in the front.

"Hear a nest, there a nest, every where a coo, coo, chirp!"

Wow everywhere I look on the yard this year there are nests. Looks like there are about 3 doves nests and one robin nest as well, not counting the sparrow ones. I guess some bird spread the word on how bird friendly are yard is. And who would blame them, it has water, constant sources of food and plenty of hiding places that's pretty sheltered from the wind but apparently not enough nesting spots. Kind of like a mall with a lack of parking spaces. LOL

Looks like our resident robin came back from his vacation down south. This time he built his nest above our garage on a grape vine.


Some doves took over the old nest out front where our resident robin made a nest last year.


Then there the dove couple that made a nest near my mom's bathroom window.

Last but not least, theres the one near the summer cages for my doves. She is nesting on the honey suckle tarris on some grape vines. You can see her head just peaking from above the whole mess. :D

I hope the nest time I can get some pics of the babies with out scaring them.

Looks like one of the female doves has joined the nest party.

One of my male doves decided that a potted spider plant makes a great nest.
I might have given him the idea for that since that's where I threw in the old eggs.
I replaced those and gave him some fake ones.
I usually make the fake ones out of clay but these ones are made out of some small Easter eggs.

Mama bird went out to look for lunch in the park so I got an even better photo opp today. I wonder where is papa bird though?



As you can see the babies eyes are just starting to open. I hope though that I could possibly get even better pics of the mama and babies feeding but I don't want to go to far because of the possibility of spooking them too much.

I also remembered that I had a bunch of grapes that have been in the fridge for a while. I took them out and placed them on the porch near the railing. I think mama bird really appreciated them. It was kind of funny when she and the grapes she was pulling at fell of the ledge. Yep I guess she really enjoyed them. I only hope they’re a little more considerate when her and her family start to attack our fruit tree and grape vine when the season is right.

Well I managed to get some pics of the robins. Didn't get too close since those birds are kind of skittish. Luckily they're close enough for me to take pics. Would like to take some better ones if the opportunity arises. I think they're about 4 to 5 days old and I think there's about 2 or 3 of them.



Made another nest for my doves today. Its for my little sweetie who is a bit crippled on one leg. She tries to nest with the others, only they give her a hard time about it. So now she has her very own nest in a private part of the outdoor cage. I only hope the others don't take too much notice and let her be. None the less she was quite pleased with it, even excepted a fake egg and some bits of straw and twigs. I could just see her happy face and a sparkle in her eye.