Doves

Doves seem to like our community. I’ve had two nests outside my balcony over the past few years and others have had nests as well. I just don’t like it when they call for mates around sunrise as I prefer to sleep in.

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The birds seem devoted to their young. My first nest was outside the bedroom window. The mother would not get off the eggs when I attempted to take a picture through the open window. So, I set the camera up on a tripod, connected it to wall power and set it so the LCD showed what was happening in the nest. I hid behind some curtains and after about 20 minutes the mother finally started to ignore the camera. That allowed me to take this picture after the first egg hatched…

Not long after I took that picture I got a call from a neighbor about a dove nest in a hanging basket on her patio. Brought a small ladder with me and slowly inched closer and closer to the nest. The closer I got the more the mother puffed up trying to look more of a menace and to shield my view of the almost-grown chick. This is as close as she would allow me to get…

It was interesting that at this position, after taking the picture, I moved my hand just a little closer to the nest. Before I knew it, the bird whipped out a wing and just barely touched my finger effectively telling me “no further,” which I respected.

Because of the early morning noise I had the position of the first nest filled with plastic bird spikes. That solved that problem but a couple of years later another nest found its way to the top of a pillar on the other side of my balcony. Had some problems with setting up a blind for that one so I had to wait until the chicks were too big to hide from me…

Colophon

Dove with baby: Taken 5 July 2011 with a Nikon D90 and AF-S NIKKOR 28-300 zoom with zoom at 300mm. ISO-400 at f5.6, 1/400 sec.

Puffed up dove: Taken 20 July 2011 with a Nikon D90 and AF-S NIKKOR 18-105 zoom with zoom at 50mm. ISO-2000 at f5, 1/125 sec.

Dove and two chicks: Taken 15 March 2013 with a Nikon D90 and AF-S NIKKOR 28-300 zoom with zoom at 200mm. ISO-1400 at f5.6, 1/125 sec.