4032 Doves

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Doves have to be the stupidest birds ever.

The street at the country house doesn't have curbs.  The side of the road is gravel. There's a tree at the end of the driveway that every spring releases fluffy puffs of fragile twigs of white something-or-other that looks for all the world like snow. It forms drifts up to a foot deep up and down the road.

We had a pair of doves that every spring built their nest smack on the gravel on the side of the road, in the midst of the floral "snow", just a few feet north of my mailbox. Every day the mailman flattened the nest, and every day the doves rebuilt it. Eventually the "snow" disintegrated, and the doves would give up.

Never saw any eggs.

There was a huge dense daffodil bed close by, and an acre of lawn, not to mention the woods.  I will never understand why they chose the road, year after year.

Update - to the new house.  For the past two weeks, every time I go out to the front porch for a cigarette, there has been a dove sitting on the electric wires passing over the end of the yard. You can tell it's a dove even in silhouette by the tiny head out of proportion with the chubby body.  It sits facing me.  Staring at me or the house. Unmoving. Eerie. It was really starting to bother me.  Shouldn't it be out foraging somewhere?

In front of the front door there's a rubber doormat.  This morning I discovered the beginnings of a dove nest on the doormat, on the hinge side of the door.  You can tell it's a dove nest because it's long fine grasses curved into a circle.

Duh?

How have doves managed to still be here?  Their survivor skills are nil.  They have to be the stupidest birds ever!
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