Heralds of the dawn
our doves call from their cages
noting every hour
Cori MacNaughton
Not long after Marek and I got together, he mentioned that he had always wanted a bird, neglecting to mention that what he meant was one of the larger macaws or parrots.
I mentioned his desire to my friend Joan, who immediately offered us GIR, the first of our doves, who is actually a dove x pigeon cross. I brought GIR home soon thereafter.
Marek's daughter Lina then gave us Zim, our buff colored dove, as a potential mate for GIR, only to discover that now we had two males. Oops.
Not long afterward, she and her boyfriend built a 6' x 6' x 6' wooden enclosure for her Australian iguana, Eddie Lizard, and we moved the doves' cage inside the larger enclosure, figuring correctly that the doves and the iguana would coexist nicely.
Then our neighbor, Sonian who had inherited her father's colony of white doves, gifted us with a lovely white dove, who ultimately turned out to be a third male. Sadly, he died when the other two males evidently forced him between the outer cage and inner cage, and he was somehow crushed between them. This made me very sad, as he was a little sweetheart, and I had bonded with him.
Finally, Sonian gave us a second white dove, this time one that she had seen lay an egg. Sure enough, she is indeed female, and we named her Gaz. She immediately bonded with Zim, and as GIR became aggressive with them both, we ultimately gave him his own cage, and put Gaz and Zim together, which is how they remain to this day.
The photo above was taken in early July, 2012, and depicts Gaz and Zim, above, with their two fledglings in the nest. The babies were copies of their parents, with the buff colored fledgling evidently a male, and the white fledgling evidently female.
Their hatching coincided with a massive heat wave, during which we went through twelve consecutive days with high temperatures of 110 degrees or above; our highest temperature during this period was 117 degrees. Yikes!
These are the only fledglings they have raised successfully to date, though Gaz has continued laying eggs every year, several times each year, without fail.
I surmise that the heat wave helped them to hatch their eggs, and as we have not had another heat wave like it, only one other eggs has hatched, and that baby did not survive. Still, they keep trying, and they take turns sitting on the eggs, as bonded pairs do.
We are still seeking a mate for GIR.
All words and images are my own.
Resteeming is welcome, you may link to my post from your own website or blog, and you may use excerpts and/or images as long as you credit me and link back to this post.
Please ask for permission, before using my work without linking to this post, as all rights are reserved.