There is a mourning dove living outside my front door. She has built something resembling a nest on the shelf where I store some old pots. As I come and go, she is always sitting there staring me down. I don’t know if she keeps an eye on me out of distrust, or maybe she disdains that I could be so busy to need to open this door yet another time. The nesting spot must be adequate because she comes back year after year to claim my porch as her own.
After an eternity of waiting, a baby dove hatches, followed soon by a sibling. The pair grows bigger quickly and soon crowds the nest. Their poop messes up my shelf, and they adopt their mother’s habit of staring. One day the nest is empty, and I go on a hunt to find the little family. They have moved to the rail of my back porch where the birdbath is. The mother dove still does not trust me even after all our close proximity, though the kids know no better and are content to be observed.
The family continues to show up in other places throughout the garden, wandering out from under a shrub while I weed, watching me from the roof when I park my car, or visiting the bird feeder. My garden seems to be ideal mourning dove habitat. The new pair of porch babies each year is just part of a growing exponential population. My little plum tree can hide at least 30 doves that all burst forth as I pass underneath to take out the compost. I enjoy the noise their wings make as they fly off and the cooing from the treetops that is sometimes mistaken for the hoot of an owl.
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