Bad day for doves

Yesterday, I hired a friend to work with me on thinning our huge douglas-fir tree in the backyard. Everything went very well, but we both wondered why two doves did some dangerous flying stunts in the area with enormous limbs falling all around them from heights of up to eighty feet. I found out later.

As I was hard at work cleaning and bucking some of the larger limbs for firewood, I glanced to one side and saw what looked like a large piece of bark in the lawn. It caught my eye, because this particular piece of bark was gray and the bark on the tree was brown. I took a closer look and found that it was not a piece of bark at all, but two baby doves snuggled side-by-side and head-to-tail in the green grass. The birds were clearly too young to fly, but they had all their feathers and were breathing and blinking their eyes. We still haven't found the nest, and I have no idea how the two of them came together to lie in the grass the way they did. We found out later that they had some limited standing and walking ability, but at least one of them must have done some pretty good traveling by their standards to seek the other out.

I showed K my discovery, and she placed a call to an organization she found in the phone book that "adopts" and cares for injured raptors and bird of endangered or exotic species. The man who answered the phone said he couldn't take these birds, but he kindly told us exactly what to do.

Following his instructions, we cut a square hole in the middle of a half-gallon milk carton and added natural grasses, leaves, and other local materials chosen for their cushy softness. We hung the new "nest" on the northeast (shady) side of the douglas-fir tree from which they fell. Then we inserted the birds next to each other in the carton.

Our counselor assured us that the mother would find her babies and that they had a very good chance of survival. He also passed on two pieces of information that we didn't know, which I will now pass on to you: (1) Have you ever been told that you shouldn't touch baby birds, because the parents will sense the human contact and abandon them? Apparently, this is BS. Actual bird parents will return to help their young after far worse than a human touch; (2) You should never feed a wild baby songbird water from a dropper or otherwise. If you do, it will likely aspirate (i.e. get fluid in its lungs and die). Wild songbird chicks get their fluid from the food that the parents regurgitate into their little mouths.

We haven't seen the parents since, but the babies are still alive in approximately the same condition as we found them. Any neighbors who have cats be warned: all felines seen in the area near our dove nest will be hunted down, captured, and flogged until dead. And that goes for raccoons and possums too!