This happened yesterday. In dealing with my home becoming a Sweat Lodge of Solitude as outdoor temperatures are rising and being without central air conditioning, I've been keeping drapes closed for the most part during the day. Yesterday evening around 6:30 I wanted to peek out onto the patio to see if the outdoor feral cats, Kalika and Vit still had food available. Vit is accustomed to my presence Kalika is not (although it's getting better) so I tend to approach the patio with a certain amount of stealth. While this event wasn't a total surprise (I've had some clues and suspicions) the similarity had me do a double take. Oh, my Glob, somebody shrunk Kalika!
All taken through dirty patio door windows. This is especially amplified on the long shots.
Today is day two and after watching trail camera video recorded from last night into early morning, it seems confirmed, there is just the one kitten. This is as cute as a kitten bouncing on a sunbeam but it's also a dilemma I need to think hard and long about. I've already done a bunch of that. A local TNR person would be a lovely find.
Post my AM walk and talk with Doc (thank you, Docken). Back home looking at pictures and gazing out onto the backyard another mad dash almost missing the butterfly.
Male monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Foreground flowers are Buddleja davidii also called butterfly-bush and background flowers are Bougainvillea.
I got wrapped up in dealing with and mostly observing a pair of mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) nesting outside of my bedroom windows of late and they became the focus of my last few posts. Despite that, I've been walking and had intended to post some pictures. SoCal has very definitely moved into summertime weather. Several walks have been designed around my skipping the "scenic route" and adjusting departure times to avoid heat exhaustion, or at least the general discomfort I find at this point in life, trekking about in temperatures above 80ºF. Yep, that's pretty much my limit these days.
The last walk report was April 1st so I'm gonna dig through images taken since that date. This might be somewhat random but here we go...
Saturday, April 5th.
Pink orchid tree (Bauhinia Blakeana).
I don't know what the deal was but this male mallard duck was really excited to see me.
I told him he didn't need to salute me but he did anyway.
This is my old Allen's hummingbird acquaintance going back to posts in late February.
Mourning dove in Eucalyptus 'Moon Lagoon'.
Same hawk, one shot with a big ol' jet airliner behind and the other a faint contrail.
This is a random cucumber. Sometimes they simply show up, no rhyme or reason.
I believe this is a Gulfstream Aerospace G650. Besides flying annoyingly low over my head, I was on the phone with Docken (thank you, Doc) and I commented on the plane's unusual path into Van Nuys airport. It is my understanding that Gulfstream has a maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facility at the airport specifically for G650 and G650ER jets. Upon viewing the photo there's something else I found especially disturbing about the plane. Any guesses?
April 12th.
Lime scooters can be rented through the Uber app in certain areas. This particular unit had been pretty well stripped apart and sat on this sidewalk or was hung on the fence of the school on the other side of the sidewalk for weeks. My opinion, ban these things.
As you can maybe tell already, I wasn't finding any photo ops on 4/12.
April 18th, which just so happens to have been my birthday.
I was telling Docken about this over the phone but ya gotta see it to believe it. These ropes are part of a trail in the local arboretum. It's a "Braille Trail", designed first in the early 70's for blind people to connect to nature with descriptive signs written in braille along the way. This is one turn along the trail... I'm sorry but what is the idea here? Watch out for that tree!
I see a dog's face in this bearded iris, can you see it?
So much for pictures on my birthday. It was a nice walk though and I was glad to have company over the phone. April 19th was basically the same walk and the same void in the photo department.
April 20th, Easter Sunday.
This is the only picture I took. the flower, Solandra maxima, also known as Cup of Gold Vine, is poisonous to humans, pets, and children. All parts of the plant, including the flowers, leaves, and stems, are toxic. Ingestion can cause symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dilated pupils, and even delirium. Is this a good choice for a braille trail?
April 22nd, the bearded dragon fiasco.
I've been really hesitant about sharing this story and how to approach it. I'm gonna try to make it brief. Like the doves, this too was right outside my bedroom windows. At first I heard a thrashing sound and was immediately concerned about the doves. Then I saw this. I must've froze. I'm sure my mouth was hanging open. I took a photo with my phone so I could Google image search and get some sort of idea what I should do. My research was brief. My rather urgent response was this was an abandoned (or lost, but doubted that) pet and I needed to deal with it. The first thing I read was the high potential for the reptile to carry the bacteria Salmonella. I pretty much already know this from my dealings with frequent in house visits from sometimes very large alligator lizards. This giant was a good 24" long and I would guess after getting it inside a container, it weighed over a pound. I estimated at the time, 1.25 pounds or 0.567 kilograms. Post my haste in moving it to an environment better suited to its survival I did an enormous amount of research and ultimately decided I did the best thing considering the circumstances. This situation reinforces my long held belief that most people should not own pets and certainly not exotic ones.
For whatever reason as I was escorting it into a suitable container, I called it Gus. I have no idea as to its actual gender.
These pictures were all taken through the same dirty windows where I frequently take pictures of the doves.
A beautiful animal in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope Gus has a reasonably peaceful life.
Gus was released relatively deep inside of this area. It's approximately 14 acres, reasonably not unlike their native territory, with plenty of irrigation for a source of water and no shortage of food. Also, I'm very familiar with this parcel of land, I have never seen people milling about out here.
Sunday, April 27th.
I miscalculated the weather. Docken was on the phone giving me Doppler advice while I sat on a bench during a brief rain shower, creating these images to later stitch for this panorama. Thank you to weather coordinator Docken for her guidance before moving on.
Yes, here he is again. The ruler of his domain.
Mourning dove.
I managed to stay behind southwesternly drifting cumulus activity.
California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) not to be confused with a chipmunk or a prairie dog, or a groundhog or a marmot which is a type of groundhog, all ground dwellers in the squirrel family. California ground squirrels and desert cottontails (Sylvilagus audubonii) are two animals I somewhat fear entering my neighborhood and they're close. Hopefully the number of dogs in the hood will preclude their induction.
Another weather conditions shot, the Santa Susana Mountains just above Porter Ranch.
In other news...
Feral friend Vit the cat has been under my medical supervision and has healed nicely.
Vit has a girlfriend, her name is Kalika. I pronounce that, KA-LEE-KA but it's actually Swedish for calico and the Swedes spell that like so, kalikå and pronounce that like... kalikå.
Here's Kalika, she's still sort of warming up to me so photos have been a tad problematic.
She's a small cat. I've never seen a cat eat as much as she does. Granted if she's not eating elsewhere she generally only eats here once a day. I will feed her if I see her although I'm not inclined to feed her when it's dark out. I have done so but I have to monitor the event, there are too many "outsiders" visiting the patio and I am especially wary of raccoons. Vit will gladly sacrifice his breakfast for Kalika. Yes, sometimes Vit's tail is very dirty. He also tends to get a small grease mark near his upper shoulders. I suspect that Vit often sleeps in someone's carport under their car.
Vit is very affectionate toward Kalika. He was licking her head while she ate here. These last two shots were taken through dirty windows.
You might ask, okay but what's going on with the doves? My calculations, if correct, point to there being two new squabs in the nest. I do as much as possible not to disturb Sally and Twigs. If you've read any of the other posts about Sally and Twigs Zenaida, you're aware that mourning doves are prolific breeders, capable of raising up to six broods per year.
It appears that both Baby Dove and Mystery left the area near May 6th. This is among the last pictures I took of Baby Dove, taken on May 5th.
Based on my limited experience studying these birds I suspect an egg was laid on May 6th and a second one on May 7th, which would coincide with this event taking place yesterday morning at 9:45 AM right after nest sitting duties were exchanged with Sally going out from the nest and Twigs coming in for the day. This is Twigs a few seconds after the departure of Sally doing some nest clean-up. I didn't have my camera ready when he removed the first piece of eggshell but I caught him removing this larger second piece. It appeared from his short hop off the wall that he flew under the Eremophila bignoniiflora bush in the background to discard the eggshell. He was back on nest duty just moments later.
That's it. I filled in some gaps. Currently it's 2:35 on May 22nd. It's 91ºF and that is something I've started to contend with. Summer, especially in this hole where I live in SoCal, is an extended season compared to the rest of them. It typically starts early and just hangs on. While the astronomical start of summer is late June, the dry, warm weather often kicks in by May and can persist through much of October, sometimes as late as November. It's a valley, sometimes referred to as a hellhole. Lucy and I will do our best to circumnavigate the situation. Thanks for tagging along. Think blue, think cool and clearly, there are evil forces in our midst. Engage in critical thinking. Peace.
The story about the mourning dove couple that began nest building directly outside of Lucy's and my bedroom windows begins with this post (scroll down) and continues here and here with Baby Dove appearing in that last linked post. I decided to name the little squab dove, Baby Dove because I got an earworm tracing back to Baby Love by The Supremes, 1964. While I can hear that entire song in my head musically the only lyrics that came to mind were, "Ooh baby love, my baby love I need you, oh how I need you." In reading the lyrics it turns out that baby love was pretty much a jerk. I will take note that the song was actually written by three dudes. But I digress...
Baby Dove began to fledge on April 28th. Around 7:00 AM I saw a quick flutter out of the nest, maybe 2-3' outside of it and in the same moment it fluttered back. As we got close to this event I've also been seeing mom and dad together again, which is nice. Twigs, the dad, had been on the day shift for egg sitting duty and mom Sally was taking on that role in the evening. Because of this I was rarely seeing Twigs outside the nest and it's really difficult to see up into that spot without some alarm over disturbing the birds. So I tried not to. Typically I would glance up at the nest from the front walkway when collecting my mail.
Here are some pictures of Sally and Twigs taken since the hatching of Baby Dove.
Sally. From her left side one way to distinguish Sally from Twigs is that small light gray spot toward the back of her head. However, it's not always visible. Feathers move around a lot. Sally from April 27th.
Another way to differentiate Sally from Twigs is by the larger, tanner feathers on her right wing. Notice too the iridescent feathers on Twigs neck. They both will show iridescent feathers but it's more pronounced on Twigs. Twigs left, Sally right, from April 28th.
The black spots, as this photo perhaps suggests, tend to move around some but for the most part I can tell the difference between the two from those too. There is some occasional confusion on my part in looking at the birds head on.
Twigs left, Sally right, from April 28th
Twigs, April 26th
Onto Baby Dove. April 28th.
Same shot but cropped in for a closer look.
Twigs and Baby Dove.
Baby Dove.
At one point Twigs and Sally exchanged places.
There was a noise up on the rock roof and since I knew the location of all three birds and because Vit the cat has sometimes been known to frequent the roof I decided going out to the front walkway would be a good idea so I could peer up at the roof. I bought my camera along to get a couple of pictures of Baby Dove not through a dirty window.
April 29th.
Things got a little weird for me but I didn't find out until about 6:00 in the evening when I took a more studied look at these photos on my computer.
First, outside the bedroom windows, both Sally and Twigs were enjoying the area down below the nest in their courtyard garden. This area is only 120 square feet and houses a gardenia bush (shown in the foreground of the last image, for example) which was planted by my dad most likely before I was born. Gardenias were my mother's favorite flower, she wore them in her hair and carried them in a bouquet on her wedding day.
Sally, very close to the windows, me too, I'm very close on my side. They are aware of my movements but don't seem particularly bothered by me when I'm inside. They both froze for a moment when Lucy went to her water dish just 30 inches (76cm) from the windows then they went right back to pecking for seeds. This area is typically relatively clear of weeds but I haven't been in there with a line trimmer for obvious reasons.
Now the weirdness, I have not figured this out...
I took that picture from the master bedroom windows at 3:08 PM. Through the viewfinder I thought it was a parent bird and Baby Dove. A few hours later there was this... I couldn't imagine Baby Dove had grown that much in a day.
I started to question both of the squabs sitting in the weeds. Maybe they were of other parents? I began backtracking on everything. In the second post on Sally and Twigs I explained how (still not sure why) Sally and Twigs got spooked in the early evening March 31st and took off for parts unknown. In the first post I indicated that it was shortly after 7:12 PM and showed two pictures from where they took off from. That wasn't the right time and those weren't the correct images. Right location, wrong images. The story is otherwise correct, I simply don't know what happened to the pictures. The accurate time of their untimely departure was sometime in the 4 PM hour. I took my phone to the nest at 5:42 PM to see if there was indeed an egg but the shot is up high with virtually no headroom clearance for taking a picture. I also tried a few seconds of video. I reviewed the video a couple of days later, frame by frame and was able to make out the egg. So this was already over an hour of the nest being vacant. It was 65º to 63ºF during those hours. I also checked the nest until it was too dark to see. Sunset was at 7:15. That egg needs to stay at 98.6º. That egg was no longer viable.
Nevertheless, both Sally and Twigs are treating both squabs as their own. I have seen other parent doves, there is a pair that semi hung out on the other side of the house and I saw they also had a squab. And while mourning doves can be rather communal they aren't when it comes to breeding. They may adopt a dove if an egg is laid in their nest by an outsider dove but this is rare. They don't adopt outside of the nest and it's quite uncommon for them to lay more than two eggs in a single brood. Besides, this first squab simply did not show up in the nest. I have spent a rather extraordinary amount of time watching these birds. And besides that, I suspect the bigger baby is more than a few days older than Baby Dove. So, excuse me but WTF?!
April 30th.
Early morning I followed Twigs and Sally from windows at one end of the house to the other. When I saw the two squabs, once again hanging close to each other and Sally "billing" with both of them, I realized for sure that they were all family. The older larger squab is now officially named, "Mystery."
Baby Dove just after Sally was "billing" with both squabs. This was taken from the master bedroom windows, shooting below the emu bush. They were too close to the window for me to get focus on the billing activity. Billing is part of mourning doves mating ritual, is used for regurgitated feeding of young and is also a sign of affection between birds including offspring.
Twigs seemed to be on guard duty a short distance in front on the driveway. Sally and the squabs are about 10 feet away.
About 50 minutes later the entire family was back either on the wall or inside their courtyard.
Sally was looking up at me, I'm less than six feet away here. Again, I'm shooting through dirty windows.
Five minutes later Twigs and Sally were up on the wall together. When together, Twigs was usually on my left. Note again the small light gray spot on Sally's head.
Baby Dove.
Baby Dove with Mystery on the right.
A content Twigs.
May 1st.
With the babies growing up... and fast. It looks like Sally and Twigs have more time for one another.
Close to the lower bedroom windows again and this time their little feet are only about 36" from my big feet.
Mystery and Baby Dove are on their way to doing their own thing.
Here's Twigs checking in. I will also note that Baby Dove is especially responsive to the presence of dad.
May 2nd.
Baby Dove left. Mystery on the right.
This post has been one of the most time consuming posts to date. 30 folders with about 75 additional subfolders, 2,000+ images taken and a couple of 100 edited images throughout this little adventure. I'm gonna continue to scratch my head over the appearance of Mystery. The first egg was abandoned and I checked the nest for hours. Baby Dove's hatching was right on schedule. I've learned more about mourning doves than probably any other bird species. Anyway, unless there's something spectacularly new and special to report I probably won't revisit the story of Sally and Twigs here but I will rather end with these images of Twigs from today, May 3rd, to indicate, the saga continues...
