Mourning Doves

A crop of milk...

Two Mourning Doves flutter into the redbud tree in my backyard. They settle close to one another, closer than most other birds sit. They look into each other’s faces, as if fascinated.

Between two Mourning Doves, a shared heart | Do you see it?

It’s a hot day in late July. For most backyard birds, this is the season of raising young, finishing up nesting, and molting — not the great season of wooing. Mourning Doves, however, are still courting.

A Mourning Dove pair may make five or six nesting attempts in one year, in a whirlwind of parenting that goes on all summer.

Male gathering twigs to deliver to his mate for their nest

He finds twigs and brings them to the female at the nest. She arranges the twigs into a sort of bowl.

It’s not elaborate, not tightly woven nor particularly secure. It may look like a few sticks tossed quickly together. I once discovered a Mourning Doves’ nest because I happened to look up while standing under the branches of a juniper tree. I saw the white eggs, visible through the flimsy bottom of the nest. There was virtually no lining.

A nest that is scarcely more than a pile of twigs

There were only two eggs in that clutch, which is normal for Mourning Doves. It is their strategy to get baby birds into the world fast. The nest progresses speedily from two eggs to fledged young in a scant month.

The parents take turns sitting on the eggs, and both feed the nestlings.

Like other doves, young Mourning Doves put their beaks into their parent’s mouths to receive crop milk, a rich, custard-like food produced by the lining of the crop. Both parents make it and feed it to the nestlings. Because the adults live largely on seeds that are abundant through summer, they are not tied to the brief peak of insect abundance that limits many songbirds. They can therefore continue nesting from spring into September.

Sometimes they start so early that if they nest in a deciduous tree the leaves are just starting to form. The foliage appears as the young are growing in the nest.

Incubating Mourning Dove, peering out from between the leaves

The parents are tenacious about brooding the eggs, Once, when we had flooding rains, we had an emergency and had to install a drain for our well pump. The pump was in a cement pit next to an ancient crabapple tree that held a Mourning Dove nest. We could not delay putting in the drain, or our house would flood.

The trencher arrived and commenced digging. It roared. The ground and the tree shook all day. Nevertheless, one of the doves stayed on those eggs.

Soon after, the eggs hatched. A few weeks later, a young dove showed up looking quite fit in my back yard. Meanwhile, two more eggs appeared in the same nest.

At about three weeks old, a Mourning Dove’s tail is still short.

Between clutches, the parents don’t waste time courting new partners. A pair stays together through the whole nesting season. Some of the cooing that we hear all summer may be Mourning Doves renewing their vows.

Recording by Diane Porter

In Iowa we have Mourning Doves all year around. Sometimes it looks as if two doves might be finding comfort in each other’s company during the worst of the weather.

Mourning Doves hunkering down in a winter snowstorm

There is some speculation that the same two parents may remain bonded over the winter. I have seen doves acting lovey-dovey very early in spring, like a pair that once courted outside my living room window in the snow.

It was February 14.

A Valentine’s Day nuzzling in the snow

One nibbled gently around the base of the other’s bill, as the recipient of the caress closed its eyes and lowered its body into a semi crouch. One is tempted to say she looked enthralled.

I was a bit enthralled myself.

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