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

The Woodpecker War, Bitter Antifreeze And It's John Blakeman by a Neck!

The woodpecker feeder war.

 

 Remember the backyard accipiter?  Ohio Red-tail expert John Blakeman-by a neck!

Donna,

The accipiter is a Cooper's Hawk, probably (from leg tarsus width) a tiercel.

Why a Cooper's and not a Sharpie? This bird has a discernable, clear neck. Sharpies look like their heads are attached to the torso without a neck of any length. 

John A. Blakeman


And excellent news gleaned by Robin of Illinois-  It is thought that Pyewacket, who had been a stray before I took her in and suffered temporarily from liver disfunction may have been a victim of antifreeze.  

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/ars/article/Bitterant-placed-in-antifreeze-to-protect-pets320?origin=FK_Trivia_12

 

A bitter flavoring agent will be added to all antifreeze and engine coolant manufactured for sale for the consumer market in the United States, a change voluntarily proposed by the manufacturers. The Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA) had partnered with the Humane Society Legislative Fund to pass laws in seventeen states to require the addition of bitterant. "Today, all major marketers are placing the bitterant in antifreeze in all 50 states,” said Phil Klein, executive vice president, legislative and public affairs for CSPA.

 

Donegal Browne

Friday Miscellany-Accipter at Dusk, Quicksilver Eats the Pie and Menaces Squirrel the Kitten, and the Rodentia Squirrels Sit in a Square

 

A blizzard is coming and the smaller birds have been gorging at the feeders until suddenly there isn't a one.  Not at the feeders anyway, but a glance up and there is the Accipter reason.The tail being either damaged or wet doesn't help at all in this case.  But she's near male Red-tail size and I'm going with a Cooper's Hawk. 

She sees me and when I look down and then up again she's gone.  Well gone from my view but not from the smaller birds as night falls without their making a visible return.

The squirrel square.

This is Quicksilver the African Grey's expression when busted for being on the counter, sitting on the edge of the pie plate, eating the pie.

The expression is slightly reminiscent of how a small child with a hand in the cookie appears facially.  It's the "I just might be in trouble" look.

Though as parrots pupils are more telling than children's are, note that his pupils are expanded at the uh-oh moment.

Now to a moment in which Silver sees himself as the disciplinarian.

Quicksilver and Squirrel the Kitten are companionably watching a Cottontail Rabbit from the front window.

Before long, typically, Squirrel looses interest in one thing and decides to investigate something else.  In this case Silver.  Note that Silver's pupil has radically contracted, his posture shifted and his feathers are beginning to stand, at the approach of the cat.

Silver's feathers continue to rise and his neck lengthens and his head lowers.  

 Silver draws a bead on Squirrel's left ear.  I'm about to intervene when Silver, being a parrot, decides on a more amusing tack.

 He opens his beak and lets out a perfect imitation of me saying loudly and with feeling, "NO!"

 Squirrel snaps back on his bottom and stares. 

Beat.

 And a moment later they're both back watching the bunny.

The moral?  A confused cat instinctively doesn't follow through on the initial impulse.   And cats do appear not to like being confused.  

Remember Silver's technique of meowing loudly in Pywacket's fact, at which point she'd run under the table and appear to be confused and thinking it over?

It's the same basic strategy. 

Donegal Browne