OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT!
Our nature news staff is here to watch your world. Well, we mean the trees, birds, flowers, frogs, crawdads, millipedes, etc. but not your house. That is your job.
We just met and decided the top story tonight is that
We just met and decided the top story tonight is that
The Doves Survived!
And so can you!
And so can you!
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As if we all were not anxious enough from the pandemic, yesterday we were greeted with the Flashing Weather Alert: thunderstorms, heavy downpours, hail, lightning, flash floods, strong winds even tornadoes, Old Testament raft. What no rivers of blood or locusts? Jeez! And we waited pensively all day for it and around midnight it did not disappoint. Our world was rocked for several hours and our news staff crawled under their comforters. So that is why they are called that!
This morning our staff checked on some of the bird nestings we have been monitoring. As a rule, the birds that live in the Tennessee Valley year round: blue jays, chickadees, titmice, bluebirds, robins, Carolina wrens, towhees nest first. They are here so why not get an early start. It’s the spring migrants that nest later after their long flights back from Central and South America.
We were not overly worried about the secondary cavity nesters. They were tucked away in hollow trees and nestboxes. It’s the open cup nesters like cardinals, mockingbirds and robins we were concerned about and especially a mourning dove nest in a second floor flowerbox at the home of Charlie Morgan. They were exposed and mourning doves are minimalist nest builders. They only pull together a few sticks.
A text from Charlie this morning eased our worries. They had survived. But wasn’t it a dove that returned to Old Testament Noah letting him know that the storms were over and the water receding?
Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) are actually pretty hardy, they may look like fluff-balls but a pair of them can have up to six broods a year from February to November. For them. Life truly does go on and on and on and on.
Ob-la-de, ob-la-da.
This morning our staff checked on some of the bird nestings we have been monitoring. As a rule, the birds that live in the Tennessee Valley year round: blue jays, chickadees, titmice, bluebirds, robins, Carolina wrens, towhees nest first. They are here so why not get an early start. It’s the spring migrants that nest later after their long flights back from Central and South America.
We were not overly worried about the secondary cavity nesters. They were tucked away in hollow trees and nestboxes. It’s the open cup nesters like cardinals, mockingbirds and robins we were concerned about and especially a mourning dove nest in a second floor flowerbox at the home of Charlie Morgan. They were exposed and mourning doves are minimalist nest builders. They only pull together a few sticks.
A text from Charlie this morning eased our worries. They had survived. But wasn’t it a dove that returned to Old Testament Noah letting him know that the storms were over and the water receding?
Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) are actually pretty hardy, they may look like fluff-balls but a pair of them can have up to six broods a year from February to November. For them. Life truly does go on and on and on and on.
Ob-la-de, ob-la-da.
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