Mourning Doves

Hello!

Day 28 of my 365 day photography journey.

My son called me today and said if I don't come over soon the doves will have flown the nest. I decided to head over today and grab some images. Brandin was handling something when I got there, so I grabbed my gear and headed to the back. I started to look for the doves on my own. I looked under ever bush in the backyard and couldn't find them.

After about 10 minutes of searching, Brandin comes out and stands on the patio and says to me, "What are you doing?" I reply, "I'm looking for the doves." He turns to his left and points at a vine growing about two feet from him, next to the entrance of the house and chuckles, "They'll right here."

Who knew? I'll explain in a minute why I was looking under bushes.

I've been bird watching since I was 6-7 years old. My mom loved it and took my brother and I with her. Do you know how hard it is to be 7 years old and told to sit still and wait for the birds? Soon I was hooked. For me seeing a new species was the goal, the trophy, bragging rights about how many different species "notches" I had in my belt. A great image of any bird is the goal now.

I share this because I was so into new species, I failed to learn much about the birds I was seeing regularly. One of these birds was the Mourning Dove (called this because of it's song, which sounds mournful), which until recently, thanks to my lovely Lee, I thought was a "Morning" Dove. Just about every time I saw one it was early in the morning, so when my mom told me it was a Mourning Dove, I easily translated that into "Morning Dove." I never looked in the book to see how it was spelled. For 40 years I was in error.

Well, Mourning Doves spend a lot of time on the ground looking for food and resting, so when I thought about mourning doves nesting, it would nest on the ground. Right? Wrong. Who knew?

This mother was so cool, calm, and amiable. She let me photograph to my hearts content.

She has two chicks in this nest with her and they are almost ready to fly the nest like my son said. There's not a lot of room left for mom as you can see in the photo below.

Thanks for the call Brandin. Give Levi a kiss for me.

Mom has to sit on the edge of the nest now. The babies are almost as big as she is.
This nest sits about 6 feet off the ground in a wisteria bush.

Mommy and a baby.

Make a Great Day.