Nigel Gummidge

 As pets we keep no dogs nor cats, but free-flying white doves who come to be fed.

On the end of our house is a white dovecote which has proved less popular as a roosting and nesting site than the space beneath the solar panels on my friend Claire’s roof.

One of the reasons is that the dovecote, with it’s pretty arched openings, is vulnerable to crows and magpies.  This spring, two pairs of doves were nesting, and then suddenly they weren’t - the nests were abandoned, the eggs and chicks vanished, and on the ground a tell-tale broken egg.  There had been a crow raid. 

We were chatting with some of the teenagers at church and confided we were worried that when the doves nested again, the crows would attack once more.  Yet we could think of no device which would keep the crows out, which would not also deter the doves.

‘You want a scarecrow,’ announced one of the boys. 

We laughed, but on consideration, he was quite right.

The doves have no fear of Nigel – it is mostly he who feeds them. So I made a model Nigel, using his old clothes and even printing out a photo of his face for it.

Nigel then sat his doppelganger on top of the garage.

It is a measure of the politeness of our lovely neighbours that they waited nearly a week before gently enquiring why we had put a lifesize model of Nigel on the roof.

So far, the crows appear not to have returned, and there has been an unexpected side effect.  We put the figure up there to scare the crows.  We did not anticipate it would also have a positive influence on the doves. 

Such is their affection for Nigel that we now have more birds than ever roosting and nesting in our little dovecote.

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.

Not a proper patio

When I hear the word 'patio' I picture the paved area in our backyard.  Essentially it is hardstanding for our picnic table and pots of herbs.

I was therefore intrigued to hear that Seville had especially beautiful patios. Just what did that mean?  Did they perhaps have integral barbecues? Or a discreet pebble fountain au Titchmarsh?

What I found was that here a patio is a whole courtyard, fragrant with jasmine or orange trees, brightened by tiles with geometric designs (azulejos) and centered on a rippling fountain.

Andalusia was under Moorish control until the twelfth century. Even after that, the Spaniards were reluctant to relinquish the very beautiful architectural style (Mudejar), one of the things which had attracted Nigel to this area. 

To plunge through the crowded narrow streets and then come on one of these outdoor sitting rooms is to encounter an oasis.  Here, people take a moment to read a book or play with their children.

The thing however that did link these Seville patios to our own was the presence of doves. We have never visited a city where there were so many white doves, and it made it feel like home. 

Even if there was no integral barbecue.

Sh*t and Twigs

When we first introduced doves to the dovecote on the end of our house, they amused us with their amateurish nest-building.

Doves are poor at estimating the width of an opening.  Again and again, the twigs they picked up failed to fit through the little doorways.  A mound of twigs gathered on the ground beneath.

And then, when they did get the twigs into the nest holes, our doves failed to display any artistry.

Nigel was having one of his period clean-outs of the dovecote when I saw what he was doing and berated him –

‘You’ve just pulled a whole nest out!’

He brandished what was in his hand: ‘But it’s nothing but sh*t and twigs!’

‘That’s exactly it!  Doves make a loose nest of twigs.’  And then sh*t on it, apparently.

 

Earlier this year, the dove situation was looking a bleak.

Each night, fewer doves were roosting in the dovecote. 

A well-fed sparrowhawk had been picking them off, leaving only a swirl of white downy feathers.

Those who remained preferred to roost further down the street, under the solar panels of our friends, Claire and Bruce.

 

However, to our surprise, new doves have found their way to us this spring – including one with a ring that shows it is from elsewhere and another which looks as if it has a fantail parent.

 

We look at the ground beneath our dovecote and vow we have never been so pleased to see a heap of sh*t and twigs.

Sharing our nest

 

Nigel and I work from home in different rooms.  He is at the back of the house, I the front.  Both of us have been suffering from persistent tapping at the window.  Tiny, hormonally crazed blue tits have been defending their territories against their own reflections.  They have been showing an interest in the nesting boxes fastened in the sheltered nooks of our walls.

On the gable end of our house, in the dove cote, one dove had been sitting on an egg for what seemed like forever and a day.  We had assumed the egg was addled and would never hatch, but she had faith and continued to brood the egg.  Recently, her patience was rewarded by a magnificent young squab.

I would call her ‘plucky’ if ‘plucky’ did not seem rather an insensitive word to apply to a bird.

The only nest we don’t like to see is the magpie nest in a tree which borders our property – the parents rob the nests of songbirds to feed their young.  However, this year, a crow with a single white feather in its tail has been bullying the magpies and they appear to have abandoned their nest. 

Amid all the home-building around us, we have thought about sharing our own nest.  Several weeks ago, we signed up to the Homes for Ukraine scheme and are waiting now to see if our guests are granted visas.  The process seems to be taking forever and a day, but we must keep hoping, just like our plucky dove.

When Birds Watch You Back

Last weekend, it was the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch – the biggest citizen science project.

In previous years we have struggled to fit it in amid the bustle of a January weekend.  This year, however, we were still in isolation following Covid, and it seemed like the epitome of excitement.

We picked an hour towards the end of the day when we knew the little chaps would be mobbing our birdfeeders trying to consume enough calories to see them through a long winter night. 

We spotted most of our regulars – blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, coal tits, dunnocks, robins, goldfinches, woodpigeons and blackbirds.

None of our more unusual visitors surfaced – the nuthatches, woodpeckers and goldcrests must have appeared on somebody else’s entry.

However, the species we saw most was our own doves.  And we also were not prepared for their reaction.  When they saw us sitting in front of the French windows, they came and watched us right back.

We could only guess at their conversation,

‘The two regulars are there – the old ones.’

‘Yes, wonder if we’ll see any of the brightly-plumaged young ones today.’

‘Doesn’t look like it – they must be in a different house today.’

‘That’s always the way – we never see anything out of the ordinary when we do the Big House Human Watch.’

A Good Time For Covid?

Nigel and I have been laid low by Covid, presumably the Omicron variant.

Since I have been working in secondary schools and he has attended the odd meeting in central London, this highly contagious variant did seem unavoidable.

Long country walks are something we consider essential to happiness, but at the moment we are confined indoors.

So I have been consoling myself that if there was one good time of year to be trapped at home, then this is it – ten dry, cold, overcast January days, with daylight fleeting early.

The very countryside has appeared dormant.

Yet as I have begun to feel better, I can see how wrong I have been.

Whenever the sun shows its face, I hear birdsong, led by our robins, but including a swelling number of other species.  Blue tits are showing a great deal of interest in our nest boxes.

Our doves have begun to vie for the best nest sites in our dove cote.

Each night, foxes rend the air with their barks.

Even the hedgehog which we have been fostering this winter seems to have no interest in hibernating.

So when I finally get the all-clear to leave the house, the first intimations of spring will be awaiting me with open arms.

Video of Nigel feeding robin by Carenza

Blue tit photo by david Griffiths on Unsplash

Preparations for a holiday

In the last fifteen months of intermittent lockdown, we have become more connected to our home. As we think about going away for a week, in the summer, we discover just how much.  The prospect of leaving certain things untended is harder, the list of favours that we have to ask of friends and neighbours longer.

Our doves have grown habituated to Nigel’s presence in the back garden.  They crowd round him, ostensibly to be fed, but primarily for his bird-talk, a stream of idle chat suited to domestic fowl.   When on holiday, we can arrange for them to be fed, but who will keep them up to date with the news? 

Likewise, a young friend from church has agreed to water the plants, but they will surely miss our coaching and encouragement.  I’m sure they will continue to photosynthesise without us, but they will lack enthusiasm.

As for the dozens of wild birds who visit our garden, they may never forgive us.  Our regular supply of seed and suet has already helped them raise one brood.  How could we leave them at what is a critical moment for their second brood?

But our young friend has agreed to re-fill the feeders for us.

So we can leave our house for just a little while and spend some time with our own brood.

Child Substitutes

Last weekend, Nick and Jackie were listening to Nigel talking about our doves and how he had built an extension to the dovecote for them.  I explained how we had got them through an outbreak of coccidiosis (a fatal bird disease). Then Nigel showed how we hand-feed them.   

“Ah,” said Jackie, “Child substitutes.”

I’ve been considering this.

Jackie is wrong because:

a I cannot tell the doves apart, whereas I can tell my children apart (even though I constantly mix their names up).

b I do not expect my children to sleep outside.

c I do not exchange news and anecdotes with the doves.

d And finally, the doves are often at home and seem pleased to see us.

However, it was Perran and Carenza’s birthday on Wednesday – we were both at work and so were they (for such is adult life) so we post-poned a get-together until the weekend.

It did occur to me that if I were to bake a birthday cake and take it out to the doves there would be no suspicious queries as to whether it was fully vegan or health worries about the sugar and fat content.

  They would be simply delighted and gobble it up.

I still don’t think they are a child substitute, for me at least, but they do offer certain definite advantages…

If you love them, let them go

I don’t like to see birds held captive in an aviary.

Small zoo cages also bother me.

For a long time, we talked of keeping doves, then finally we took the plunge.

But the first stage in keeping doves is to keep them netted in for six weeks while they decide that your dovecote is home.

Nigel carefully put up a net that was as spacious as possible, but still I did not like to see them trapped inside. 

Whenever somebody visited I felt I had to explain our apparent cruelty.  One friend jumped to the conclusion that the net was permanent and scolded me.

However, the only thing worse than keeping the net on was the day when it was time to remove it.  

You cannot be certain the doves will return.  Like adolescent children they will be exposed to the dangers of road traffic and evil strangers – although in the case of the doves, the evil stranger is a sparrowhawk. 

It was my birthday when we removed the nets and our children were there.  The doves sped off into the blue as fast as their wings would carry them before the nets were even down properly.

“They buzzed right off!” said Carenza.

Only at dusk, when the urge to roost came over them would we know for sure if they would return.

That night, as the sun lowered in the sky, through the clear evening light, first came winging one dove, then several more, plopped into their pigeonholes, turned and looked out at us. That first night, we were two short, but another came and rejoined the second night. 

One down.

We would have to be content with that.

Supernatural Bird Activities

We had netted in a batch of new doves – to keep them in our dovecote for six weeks while they came to accept it as home.

Now, we were only one week off releasing them so they could fly free.

We returned home one night in the dark. 

I looked up and said goodnight to the roosting doves.

But then I stopped in my tracks.

On the floor of the enclosure lay a still white shape.

“One of our doves is dead.”

But when I looked up at the dovecote where the rest were roosting, I counted the same number as ever.

We looked again at the dead dove and saw it had some black markings unlike any of ours.

“So the one on the ground is from outside?  But how did it get in?”

Nigel hazarded, “Perhaps it was trying to get in through the net and it died.”

“But then it would still be stuck in the net.”

It was like Sherlock Holmes – The Mystery of the Dead Dove. Or is that a Henry James?

I decided that a neighbour had found an injured or sick bird and tucked it into our enclosure, out of the way of cats.  Where, unfortunately, it had died.

One day soon a neighbour would come up to me and explain.  However, a fortnight later I am still waiting.

Spooked by the event, we un-netted the doves a week early.  So for them it was a good outcome.

I’m now wondering whether, in the interests of freedom, they somehow managed to rig up this “dead dove scam” themselves.

Our house with "doves"

The Dove and the Passion Flower

The last few weeks have been about trying again.

A year ago we attempted to establish our own flock of doves but failed to source bonded pairs of birds as we should have. 

Over winter we appeared to be running an all-you-can-eat buffet for the local sparrowhawk. In the spring the two remaining pairs nested but magpies raided them persistently. Finally they drifted off to join a bigger flock just down the road.

Three weeks ago we got new birds and netted them in so they would learn to think of our dove cote as home. Then on the night of a dear friend's funeral, a fox broke in, killed one dove and made a hole big enough for others to get out.

Now we are trying once more with four new pairs of doves.

Meanwhile in the back garden, we just planted a passion flower for the fourth time. We're usually good with flowers, but clearly not passion flowers. Maybe this time.

In both cases, we think it's worth trying again because we have a vision. A flock of doves wheeling above our house and landing on the roof.  A sunny back wall bursting into life with the exotic green and violet blooms of the passion flower.

With both flowers and birds, we've taken note of what went wrong and tried to improve our chances of success this time.

Wish us luck

Leaving Home

Since our children have left home, there have just been the two of us in the house.  It’s been quiet.  Then we hit on the idea of keeping doves. (See previous posts 1 & 2.)

So that the doves would recognise our dovecote at home, we took them through a process known (appropriately) as “homing”.  We used a net to keep them cooped up for six weeks in the dovecote.

The moment for their freedom had arrived at last. Perran, Carenza and Will joined us for the occasion and our neighbours came across. 

Uncertainly, our six snowy doves teetered on the perches of the dovecote not sure what was expected of them. At last, one or two at a time, they fluttered up to the roof where the golden afternoon light caught them, then on into the wild blue yonder, flapping like learners, unaccustomed to the air.

We knew that they should be “homed” by now and come back to roost at nightfall. But as they departed I found myself wondering “What if they don't?”

I realised that I had recreated for myself a reenactment of the traumatic moment when the children flew the nest.  Old emotions rushed back to the surface.

With the pigeons vanished into the sky, Perran, Carenza and Will left for their homes.

At nightfall I was able to text them “Four have come back.”

We were both relieved that some had come back and disappointed of course that not all had returned . 

The following day, only three returned.

Nigel and I kept going out anxiously, but however many times we counted, it only amounted to three doves in the cote.

Finally, on the third evening, a magnificent total of five arrived home, and it has been five ever since.

Possibly our local sparrowhawk got number six, but I’m not complaining. 

They came back.

Not for Weddings

Having decided to get doves (see last post), Nigel became proactive. He ordered a dovecote. We were surprised at how expensive dovecotes are, and how large.

When ours arrived we peered inside to see if there were en suite bathrooms with power showers and anti-mist electric mirrors.

Nigel and a helpful neighbour got it pinned to the wall.

Now all we had to do was source the doves. 

We had to be quick as doves need to be cooped up for six weeks in order to bond with their new home.  We had six weeks right now, following my foot surgery, but as soon as I was better, we would need to go away for the weekend visiting our parents once more.

But even with Google at our fingertips we were drawing a blank.

A site called “Preloved” was offering doves.  I was not sure I want “preloved” doves. It sounded a little weird.

But we joined the site anyway, only to find them gone.

Another breeder insisted on answering our queries only in single word answers and after a while, we gave up the struggle. Yes.

Time was going on.

Finally Nigel found a supplier who said, “Not sold for release at weddings” – the hallmark of quality.

Only snag was they were in Great Yarmouth, nearly three hours from us.

We asked the questions we were supposed to:

“Are they bonded pairs?”

“Sorry, no – too young.”

“Well, have you been able to sex them then?”

“Very difficult with doves.”

“And have you wormed them?”

“Don't usually bother I'm afraid.”

Hmm.

But time was ticking away.

“We’ll take them!”

And that was how we came to drive all the way to Great Yarmouth with a large cardboard box, and bring it back again full of snowy white doves.

Feathered Ambition

Doves have been special to us ever since our courtship. When we moved to our current house we were delighted to see that there were doves nesting under the solar panels opposite. (See previous blog.)

However the owners of the solar panels were less impressed and blocked the birds’ access with wire netting. Still convinced that it was their home, the doves returned for a while but soon it became rarer to see them. 

I missed them.

Then I overheard a conversation in an upmarket junk shop in Cornwall. A woman browsing amongst the stuffed owls and Formica table tops was telling her companion how she had been given three pairs of doves as a wedding gift and now had a whole flock.

My ears flapped. My mouth gaped. I looked down to see I was gripping an antique prosthetic leg.

Hastily I put it down and left to ring Nigel. "We could get our own doves!"

Nigel did some research. 

There was an obstacle. In order to feel that our garden was their home, the birds would need to be cooped up here for 6 weeks. 

"But when would we be at home all the time for six whole weeks?"

When I've had surgery on my foot. That's when.

So we are seizing the day and getting some doves. At last I will not be the only one being "cooped up" at our house.