We have a lot of doves. Dozens of them. Since I’m not putting as much food into the flat feeder, they gather on the ground more often than on the flat feeder. Doves can’t cling to a feeder. they are too big and shaped wrong. They are, however, terrific flyers and truly beautiful in the air.
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Categories: #Birds, #gallery, #Photography
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What lovely birds! I wondered about your title (whether it was a play on words …. I thought they were called MORNING doves) so I googled … looks like I had it wrong for all these many years!
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Just such beautiful photos! I love doves too, and we had (have?) mourning doves here, but we also have predator birds (hawks, goshawks, perigreens) which apparently love doves too (for snacking on). So they don’t stick around for long.
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They are THE favored snack for our hawks, too. I think they have “Lunch!” printed on their feathers in “hawk-speak.”
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Beautiful birds with such delicate colouring!
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They are beautiful but they are also not the brightest bulbs in the tree. They tend to frolic in the open and pay no attention to anything going on, so they are the favorite snacks for hawks. They get sad if we don’t feed them for a day or two. Not hustlers, I fear. But they are very pretty and the coloring is a lovely blend of pastels.
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I love the picture of the TWO doves in the flat feeder. Swapping bird gossip?
Probably discussing their favorite film, “Good Morning, Miss Dove” (Fox/’51) Jennifer Jones, Robert Stack, Chuck Connors.
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HI Marilyn, I started feeding the doves a few winters ago. They became very fat and lazy and took to sitting around my garden waiting to be fed which was a bit of a nuisance. I had to stop feeding them. I did raise a baby dove when I was about 19. It fell out of the nest and was rejected by the mother. I feed it with a syringe alternating water and cereal. The dove grew up and eventually flew again. I also raised a hoopoe bird.
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They ARE fat and lazy. I don’t go out of my way to feed them. They usually pick up anything the other birds don’t eat like milo which I think none of the other birds will eat. They are also kind of stupid, EVEN for birds. But pretty with lovely colors and beautiful when they fly. They also do a good deck cleanup when the other birds are finished and I enjoy looking at them. But you are right. Fat. Lazy. And not very bright.
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Haha, my dad calls my flying rats.
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I love the sound of mourning doves. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one at my house here.
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They sing a lot. Before they became the bird that pretty much lives on the deck (they like to lay around in the flat feeder when it’s empty) I used to hear their “coo coo coo” call. I gather that’s a mating call, though they are monogamous so maybe that the call the unwedded boys make. They hang around in the open, so are frequently eaten by hawks. We have easily two dozen of them which is a lot of doves. They nest in nearby trees and their babies look like perfect miniatures of their parents.
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