Babies

We have so many birds in our new neighborhood, and the ones we see the most often are mourning doves. We hear their coos and hoots (Henry sometimes insists they are owls!) all the time and we have been excited to have five mourning doves nests on or near our house this spring! We've had four nests so far on the ledges made by our gutters. Three are currently "active" nests.

But my favorite nest was this one, in the tree right outside Henry's room. The location was great for us, because it was right above the driveway and we had awesome views of it from above (this picture was taken from Henry's window) and below. We saw it being built, when it was occupied by mama and daddy mourning dove, and we even saw the babies! Can you see them in this shot? There were two. The eggshell under the tree! The nest is empty now, as the babies have fledged. The boys and I were worried that the babies left the nest so soon, but it turns out mourning dove babies are only nestlings for 15 days. We also discovered that males sit on the nest during the day while mamas take over the night shift. We've had so much fun watching our nest and learning all about mourning doves this spring!