Pigeon

Every year the mourning doves come to claim my mothers planter on our backyard deck to make a nest. They even have some shelter overhead to protect themselves from rain and sun.

This year they took about 4 days to prepare their nest before the mother started staying full time.

They are all quite chill with us on the deck and will usually watch us for a bit until they relax. I'm sure my dad will slowly work up to being able to water the plants without the doves flying away but it's still too soon right now.

Looking forward to seeing the babies :)

What a couple. Shitting on the balcony railing.

When i first saw Alfie, one and a half years ago on my balcony i thought he must be real old or sick. He was sitting in a flower pot and seemed completely unimpressed that i was standing right next to him. Just doing a lazy warning call, which i did not even recognize back then. Well i guess he is actually quite old, but such a chill dude.

And Maria always used to be my favorite pigeon, she just has such a funny and lovely character. I didn't know for a long time that they were actually a couple, i thought that was so cool when i found out.

In the last weak i saw Maria getting on top of him to mate, haha. But also the other way around. Never seen that before with other couples.

Somebody feeds them bread there. Love seeing them just chill.

Pigeons, canadian and egyptian geese.

What can happen when you don't touch the back row of the container stack for long enough.

A photo from a few weeks ago. According to the poo it left, it stayed around for about 3-4 nights. Have not seen it yet, hope it's doing fine. The other balcony locals are there, and i am going to have new pigeon babies on my balcony in a week, Martha and her partner are sitting on eggs 🙄 I've checked the eggs but they are a few days too far in development for my ethical compass to still swap them for fakes. Very well hidden.

One parent was just there to feed, that's how i saw them. It was doing a good job of feeding both, because it was sitting on the thin dark steel beam and could only feed the one that was closest, but then flew away for a second to land in between the chicks and feed the other one, which seems to have some feather condition on its neck.

Under the terrace roof of a cafe again. Hope they don't get hurt falling off that beam before they're ready, the feeding excitement looked really sketchy.

At the right spot, with enough time and.. construction material, the pigeon nest can grow into something a lot more serious looking than the famous meme nests.

There are nests up to 30-40cm in height at that place.

Apparently inspired by “Dinosaur,” a pigeon statue on the High Line Plinth, at 30th Street and 10th Avenue

Doesn’t sound like it’ll be a recurring thing (they totally should do it again), but looks like it was lots of fun!

NYT archive link

Hello. There are (at least) two rock doves hidden in this picture. Can you spot them? 😁

I am sitting in a cafe, watching this collared dove bring sticks to the wisteria roof that covers the terrasse.

One of my favorite things about staying at official camp sites is that the birds in the area know that humans leave crumbs.

Lured some collared doves to my tent. I hope they'll have breakfast with me tomorrow.

Now i looked up what the difference between doves and pigeons is again. I thought there was no difference other than something etymological, dove obviously has Germanic roots, pigeon is French. In German and I believe Dutch they are all called doves (taube, Dutch: duif). But then I read an article which claimed this:

All species and breeds of pigeons have 80 chromosomes while all species and breeds of dove have 76 or 78 chromosomes.

But the feral's ancestors are called rock doves? Are they just named wrong, are they not doves?

French also has the colombe word for what I guess the English call doves, and the rock doves are also called colombe des rochers but i think mostly pigeon biset..

Pigeon landed in the backyard and stared into my soul from the window

So this is now the 4th spot on the balcony it has chosen to sleep. I just woke it up when i put tomorrow's raisins on the blackbird's plate and took the photo. I saw it before from the inside, it looked like the whole brain was asleep, haha. It has been sleeping here most of the nights since it showed up. One night we scared each other when i went out and it went flying, but returned. I wish it would find a better place to sleep.

I have been giving it some food every day, very early in the morning (it wakes me up, cooing at 5:15). So it has a bit of power for the day to search for more. I did not give it food at any other times and it does not hang out on the balcony. That's good.

It runs into quite a bit of trouble with other pigeons, but it is pretty strong and stubborn, not loosing all of the fights. There is also some bully pigeon who i somehow follows it around a bit, also to the balcony, bugging it at its original sleeping spot. Really weird, no pigeon ever hung out there before.

I'll now be on holidays for a bit and i hope it will look for something else.

Two of my favorite moves.

Or cowlick? This is the sibling of the young pigeon i posted yesterday. Stretching out my content a bit, haha.

It grew up on the balcony above, this is one of its very first little flights. Don't think i saw it since.