DOVES PIGEONS AND A SQUIRREL OR TWO

I have been staying with my sister and mom in Houston while waiting for the condominium I just bought to close. One of my jobs is to feed the birds each morning. She has been feeding them for years and I suspect several generations of doves and pigeons have come to breakfast. The feeders are right outside the breakfast room windows, and they bring untold joy to my 97 year old mother who loves to have breakfast with the birds.

Hope I look that good at 97. Heck, I hope I am around at 97.

Back to the birds. We all know that pigeons are city dwellers as they like to roost and nest in buildings. Well, yes an occasional rural barn or two.

But when I think of doves I think of wheat fields and rural areas. Well, these are city doves. When I go out with the feed pale, you can hear them calling the flock together and they sit in the trees waiting like vultures over a kill. Look carefully.

 

Normally they will not come down till I leave, but today, I guess they were too hungry. They started shifting from tree to tree, then a pigeon or two came first and then the a dove came down without incident, and then they came in mass.

 

 

 

 

My dog Bubbie found the whole thing curious, but not very interesting.

Then the real acrobats joined the crowd, but the birds usually vacate when the squirrels arrive

Occasionally a blue jay, cardinal or mocking bird will join, but they seem to be timid around the doves and pigeons. Last year for about a month a little blue parakeet showed up each day and held his own with the big birds.

Now, on a different note, my dad died 4 years ago today at 94 years old. He always thought and said he would make a hundred, but it appears he delegated that job to mom. They spent 72 happily married years together. They lived in a country house on 55 acres about 3 hours north of Houston in a small town where my dad once served as the Methodist minister. I referenced it in pevious blogs and I spent a lot of time there in the last year before finally deciding to make Houston home again.

They fed birds and I remember how my mom and dad could spend hours watching the birds at the feeders outside their breakfast window. I thik they knew each one by name. In the country, not only would they get an occasional squirrel, but a raccoon or two as well.

This is a picture I had to take with my iPad from my iPhone, but I think you can get the point. It is my favorite picture of my parents. It might be from 8 or 10 years back. Their romance and love never wained with age.

 

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