Baby Doves found dead
I live in the Pacific Northwest and have mourning doves who nest under the rafters of my deck. I have had several clutches over the past 2 years and noticed the parents are very attentive to the babies. They are so precious.
This second clutch the parents behave different. A dove sat on the nest during the day and night until the eggs hatched. Then, would disappear during the day, and sometimes not even come at night. This has been going on for nearly 3 weeks. I saw a few days ago, the little babies, poking their heads above the nest, so I felt better about the babies being OK. But still during the day and at night no parents sat on the nest to keep the babies warm like I had seen before and I never saw them being fed.
Over the weekend I laid on my bed with the sheer curtains, closed and watched to see if there was any activity at the nest. A smaller dove would come and look at the nest and then stomp around over the babies, and then fly away. Then a couple days later, the fat daddy came before dusk, stomped around the nest and then sat to the side during the night. This was two nights ago. My instincts told me to put seed on the rafter for the babies but I did not because I was afraid of scaring them. The next night, my relief was brief because fat daddy came again at night and sat on the rafter. I watched him land, go to the nest and walk around on top of the babies and then he perched for the night to the side of the nest. I never saw him feed the babies. I got up in the morning and had to go to work. I heard for the first time in many days, the adult doves, cooing and cooing at the babies, like I had heard them Co before at different clutches to encourage the babies to come out, perhaps. But I knew the babies still had some pin feathers.
When I came home, I looked up at the rafter, and did not see any parents again or little heads popped up above the nest, so I climbed up and put my finger on the top of the nest and felt nothing. It was empty. I knew the babies still had pinfeathers and would not have flown away. so I looked around my deck and found both babies, dead, about 3 feet from the deck and 2 feet apart from one another. Their bodies appeared flat, with wings spread. I sat on the ground and cried.
Do you know why my babies died? Should I have tried to feed them when I knew that the parents were behaving very differently than what I had seen with several clutches before? I am so upset, I did not sleep. Do adult male doves, kill baby male doves? Did the babies try to leave the nest to find food?
