Birds don’t live for ever

Since 2018 we have kept doves, but it took until the 2020 lockdowns for them to become part of the rhythm of our days with Nigel feeding them by hand and talking to them as they snaffled their dried peas and corn.

Being completely white, doves are difficult to distinguish from one another.  However, this anonymity has surely saved us some heartbreak. Doves are vulnerable to predators - their pale plumage makes them an easy target for our local sparrowhawks and peregrines and cats. Yet when we see feathers scattered on the ground (carnivore confetti) it is often hard to tell exactly which dove had been taken. 

One bird, however, has been our particular favourite - an excellent mother she has raised many chicks in our dovecote.  Over the years she has had two long-term partners with whom she has billed and cooed.  We could tell her from the others by a black feather below her eye, giving her the name Tear.  Every so often, Tear would vanish for a few days to incubate eggs, but now, for several weeks, she has not reappeared.

Similarly, it was during the Covid lockdowns that Nigel encouraged our garden robin to feed from his hand, and soon mine too.  The robin was always particularly friendly when feeding chicks.  He would look about him cautiously then swoop towards me.  Fluttering in midair, onto my fingers he would place his feet, looking as if they had been drawn with a sharp pencil. Swiftly he would tilt to peck a strand of suet from my palm, then make off with his haul to his nest in the bushes.

This year, he had raised one brood of round speckled robin chicks and was on his second.  As the nesting season wore on, he looked increasingly tired and shabby, and now he too has disappeared.

In both cases, we’ll never know for certain how they met their end, and there is a kindness in that.  It is good to remember both Tear and Robin as we last saw them, waiting on the patio for us to come out and bring them food.  To catch our attention Tear would peck at the window and Robin would tweet loudly. 

And now I think about it, perhaps it was they who had trained us, rather than the other way about.