HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM DOORSTEP DOVE, FRIEND!, and Pale Male Too

 Photo courtesy of www.palemale.com
Happy New Year from Pale Male, who has once started his renovations on the 927 Fifth Avenue nest for the upcoming season!
Happy New Year from Doorstep Dove...

Friend...

And the rest of the extended family!

At 2:08 this afternoon I looked out and saw Mourning Doves.  

A rare sight for the past couple of months.  And the two foraging in the feeding floor looked very like Doorstep and Friend.  I bobbed my head and Doorstep bobbed hers.   I was delighted and  flooded with relief.  

They were back!

They'd made it through the Wisconsin Mourning Dove hunting season, which ran from September 1st through November 9th this year, yet again!

The Wisconsin DNR website pertaining to Mourning Dove hunting season reports that the breeding population of Wisconsin Mourning Doves migrates out of Wisconsin as a flat fact.

Well most winters previous to the Dove hunting season that was started in Wisconsin a few winters ago, Doorstep and Friend were at the feeder on a daily basis.

Remember Doorstep got her name from snuggling up to the patio door during winter snow storms.

The DNR also says a fledgling Mourning Dove can do without her parent's care at less than a week off the nest.  This is patently untrue.

Do these state employees ever watch these birds in any detail?  Or are they just fabricating facts that are convenient? 

After Mourning Dove hunting season was implemented in Wisconsin they have often disappeared for months during the Fall and Winter.  Which is rather horrifying as one doesn't know if they've been shot or not while waiting out their absence.    

Below is a little of what the Humane Society of the United States has to say about Mourning Dove Hunting, and more states join the macabre slaughter every year, 41 states and counting, of more than 20 million Mourning Doves--

 "Mourning doves are the traditional bird of peace and a beloved backyard songbird. But some people use mourning doves as live targets, sometimes calling them "cheap skeet." Hunters kill more doves each year—more than 20 million—than any other animal in the country.

Doves are not overpopulated, and hunting them doesn't feed anyone or help manage wildlife. Mourning doves—called the "farmer's friend" because they eat weed seeds—pose no threat to crops, homes or anything of value to people.
Many hunters don't bother to retrieve the dead or wounded birds.
American kestrels, sharp-shinned hawks, and other federally protected birds look like doves and can be shot by mistake.
Mourning doves nest during the fall hunting season, and hunting can orphan chicks, who starve in the nest without their parents' care."
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/

Where Doorstep Dove, Friend and their extended family go, I don't know.  But I hope they keep going there.

And my wish for the New Year is that 
all the other Mourning Doves could find a safe place to go as well.

Shooting a Mourning Dove, a long lived bird who is our emblem of peace and nicknamed the "farmers friend" for their penchant for eating weed seeds, isn't  "sport" it is savagery.

Donegal Browne