New Birds

Today I came home and saw Homer standing on the balcony ledge, off her nest. She was just watching me walk up the stairs with her big, black eyes. She twitched her head but never once appeared threatened or afraid. Standing on my tip toes I could see in the nest two little mottled brown fledglings, with teeny black eyes and brown and white wings. They were so tiny and perfect. Homer just watched me watching them, and then I realized she looked kind of expectant. She sort of looked at me like "OK, well, where are the seeds?"

Mario brought out his bag of sunflower seeds and we started cracking. My mom always told me growing up that you can't actually touch anything that birds will be with: food, nests, eggs, and especially their babies. The smell of human on your hands will spook them and they risk abandoning the nest out of fear of being hunted.

But not Homer. Mario and I cracked the seeds with our teeth and hand-delivered each one to the balcony ledge. Before we even cracked the last few seeds, Homer had already walked over to them and started pecking away. We would slip the seeds right under her beak, our fingers just brushes away from her wing feathers. We probably could have hand fed her, if we were tall enough. Mario reminded me that Homer, though sweet and trusting, is a wild animal and we respected her place in nature.

Later, Homer retreated to the nest to feed her young a nutritious, delicious meal of dove vomit. Seriously. The babies made barely audible squeaking noises (they can't be described as chirps...their noises were too faint and too high pitched). Before going to sleep, a baby poked his little head out from under her grey belly. It looked like her breast feathers had eyes and a tiny beak. The little Homie stayed there watching me watch him, maybe protecting his mother, or maybe just curious too.

I hope I'm around when the fledglings try to fly for the first time. Homer's last brood flew the coop while I was on vacation and I'm afraid I'll miss it again. But now Mario and I know that the Homer family trusts us, likes their little nest location, and even if the second round of Homies leaves before we can say goodbye, we're confident they'll return again to nest and grace us with their gentle, sweet presence.


You must have been a beautiful baby... (photo not mine...this is from the website of a person with an actual digital camera who also has her own family of Mourning Doves).