The Birds, and not the one with Tippi Hedren

So, as related in this post, a couple of mourning doves made a nest outside the second story window of our "game room." Here's some photos:

One of the birds sitting on the eggs:

Don't know if this is the male or the female. There were two eggs, and at one point one of the eggs had fallen out of the nest, miraculously resting on the window ledge (rather than falling the two stories to the ground). We thought about moving the egg back in the nest, but then felt better of it due to evolutionary/"survival of the fittest" reasons.

Later, somehow, the bird had replaced the stray egg in the nest. Go figure.

Here's dear Simba checking out the action. The bird seemed relatively calm, considering:


You'd think that Simba would have been really interested in this delicious display of fauna. However, he really could care less, only watching the bird when we, the humans, were also watching the bird. In other words, it was more of a "hey, what are you guys looking at? Why aren't you looking at me?" type of thing. It's all about Simba; the bird and nest were secondary.

Here's the baby birds about 5 days after they hatched:

Awwww... aren't they cute? They got big very quickly; this was our first view of them, since the mother was always sitting on them, even after they hatched. Usually, the mother and/or father left the nest at night, but this was a rare time during the day when they were gone and we could look at the baby doves.

Eventually, the birds got too big for the momma to sit on. This took about another five days. As I said, they grew very fast.

So here they are at about hatching plus 10 days. I was dusting right after this and scared the mom away accidentally when I tried to dust the window sill. She came back after about 10 minutes.

However, a couple of days ago when I was showing my mom the nest I gestured a bit too much and the mom flew away, followed by the two baby birds. Off they went! I hope they were ready, because there's no way they can fly back to the nest, and I've not seen them since (I checked the front yard, etc, but nothing. I'm assuming they're okay).

Thus ends the story of the mourning doves.