Garden Notes

Baby Mourning Doves at home in nesting shelf

For the last few years we have been on a mission to garden more organically and use fewer chemicals to control pests. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to attract birds into our yard in the hope that they would be our first line of defense. We’ve put up bird houses, nesting shelves, installed bird baths, and planted shrubs that have edible berries. We also keep our bird feeders filled year-round.

Our efforts paid off and we have a large variety of finches, wrens, chickadees, robins, doves, bluebirds, nuthatches and the occasional hawk in our yard. They do make a big difference in the war on bugs and I especially like the little wren family who usually inhabit the wren house right outside my office window. I love watching the parents feed their babies insects and worms gathered from our yard.

A few years ago when we were starting this plan, my husband built two nesting shelves and placed them in the grape arbor. They were an instant success and every year since we’ve had robins in one and doves in the other. At the end of summer, I empty all the bird houses to get them ready for the next year. I also remove the robin’s mud nest and scoop out the straw and poop from the dove’s nest. Then I flush out the nesting shelves with the garden hose to make sure they are really clean.

Last year I forgot to clean out the dove’s nest because they had a late brood. This spring, the dove family arrived first and built their nest on the robin’s side. When the robins arrived a few weeks later, the male robin was very upset and kept dive bombing my office window. That poor bird would smash into the window, fall to the ground, shake himself off and 10 minutes later would bang into the window again. I am not sure why he chose my window, but it was almost like he was complaining about my renting out his house to someone else. The dove chicks were almost grown at this point and when they left the nest, I cleaned out the nesting shelf and the robins started building their nest before the shelf was even dry.

As you know, doves raise more than one brood of chicks each season. So after a couple of weeks the doves returned to start their next family. They were very upset about the robins living in their house and began stalking them. Watching all the fuss, I wondered why they didn’t just use the second nesting shelf and I climbed up to see what was wrong. I found the nesting shelf was very messy and it still had last years nest with old bird poop. I clean up the mess, flushed it out with water and the doves began building their new nest that same evening.

I found that whole bird drama really funny and thought that in some ways birds are a lot like people. It seems that nobody likes to move into a dirty house!