View the Mourning Dove Nest On My Balcony

In April of 2007, I noticed a pair of mourning doves checking out a planter on my balcony. They soon decided this would be a great place to raise a family, and moved in. Following are some of the pictures I took of my new family. After the first bunch of kids left the nest, a new family moved in!

04/24/07 - Here's Gracie sitting on the nest. There were some bad storms going on. She's a real trooper!

04/25/07 - This is the morning after the storms. Everybody seems to be OK.

After doing some research on the Internet about mourning doves, I found they mate for life. They usually lay two eggs a few hours apart. The parents take turns sitting on the nest. The mother tends to the nest at night, and the father during the day. Mourning dove males and females look so much alike that I couldn't tell George and Gracie apart. Knowing when the parents tend the nest helped me figure out which was which.

Gracie laid two eggs!

When I saw they were building a nest in my planter, I moved some of the silk flowers to the outside and added some moss. You can see some of the blue moss they used, adding some twigs to complete the nest.

Another view of the two eggs in the nest.

These dedicated birds sit on the nest no matter what the weather is. The days were very warm, but George didn't move. Poor Gracie had to suffer through some bad overnight storms.

Mom or Dad just flew back to the nest after a brief break.

05/06/07 - George has an empty egg in his beak. The first baby just hatched!

05/06/07 - When George flew away to get rid of the empty shell, I was able to get a picture of the newborn. It's leaning up against the egg of its brother or sister, which will hatch in a few hours.

05/06/07 - Another photo of the new baby.

05/06/07 - George came back for a little while, then left again, maybe for food for the baby. While he was there, he moved the baby over to the other side of the egg.

05/12/07 - You can barely see one of the babies sitting to the left of George. It's amazing how fast they grow.

05/12/07 - Here's another view. It was hard to get close enough to get a photo, even with a zoom lens. I didn't want to scare the parent away.

05/18/07 - This looks like Gracie. She's thinner in the neck and shoulders than George. Here she is watching over her two babies.

05/18/07 - Here's feeding time with George. They can all just barely fit in the nest! The arrows point to the two babies. My balcony faces west, so the nest is in the shade some parts of the day

05/18/07 - I tried taking this one from inside, which I discovered didn't work very well.

Here's page 2 - more dove photos!