Pigeon

Hello. There are (at least) two rock doves hidden in this picture. Can you spot them? 😁

I am sitting in a cafe, watching this collared dove bring sticks to the wisteria roof that covers the terrasse.

One of my favorite things about staying at official camp sites is that the birds in the area know that humans leave crumbs.

Lured some collared doves to my tent. I hope they'll have breakfast with me tomorrow.

Now i looked up what the difference between doves and pigeons is again. I thought there was no difference other than something etymological, dove obviously has Germanic roots, pigeon is French. In German and I believe Dutch they are all called doves (taube, Dutch: duif). But then I read an article which claimed this:

All species and breeds of pigeons have 80 chromosomes while all species and breeds of dove have 76 or 78 chromosomes.

But the feral's ancestors are called rock doves? Are they just named wrong, are they not doves?

French also has the colombe word for what I guess the English call doves, and the rock doves are also called colombe des rochers but i think mostly pigeon biset..

Pigeon landed in the backyard and stared into my soul from the window

So this is now the 4th spot on the balcony it has chosen to sleep. I just woke it up when i put tomorrow's raisins on the blackbird's plate and took the photo. I saw it before from the inside, it looked like the whole brain was asleep, haha. It has been sleeping here most of the nights since it showed up. One night we scared each other when i went out and it went flying, but returned. I wish it would find a better place to sleep.

I have been giving it some food every day, very early in the morning (it wakes me up, cooing at 5:15). So it has a bit of power for the day to search for more. I did not give it food at any other times and it does not hang out on the balcony. That's good.

It runs into quite a bit of trouble with other pigeons, but it is pretty strong and stubborn, not loosing all of the fights. There is also some bully pigeon who i somehow follows it around a bit, also to the balcony, bugging it at its original sleeping spot. Really weird, no pigeon ever hung out there before.

I'll now be on holidays for a bit and i hope it will look for something else.

Two of my favorite moves.

Or cowlick? This is the sibling of the young pigeon i posted yesterday. Stretching out my content a bit, haha.

It grew up on the balcony above, this is one of its very first little flights. Don't think i saw it since.

Tachikawa, Japan

And she also has a name.

Very witty title.

Just caught these two sitting together in the water dish 🥰 Made my day.

In a metro station. Pretty damn cool how it was sailing all the way down the long escalators.

I encountered this golden young pigeon today

This young pigeon showed up in our yard a few weeks ago. It was searching for food pretty much all day below a feeder that's hanging in the garden, desperately looking for scraps that the finches and tits would leave. I felt a bit sorry for it. When it made its way to the balcony i gave it some seeds but quickly stopped doing so again, because it started squatting the balcony for the whole day. I don't want it to think that life is about hanging out on the balcony, waiting for someone to show up with seeds.

A few days ago then i was watering the balcony plants in the evening and noticed pigeon shit on the basil. I looked up and there it was sleeping:

(was a lot darker than it seems on the photo)

It must have slept there the night before already. I moved the basil and built some kind of poo catcher. Quite impressive how much poo it left in a night 😅 It stayed for about five nights but yesterday it did not show up, i guess it was too busy on the balcony. Still leaving the poo catcher for now in case it shows up again tonight.

Father taking the kids for their first little rounds off the balcony.