brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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This summer my husband and I enjoyed a unique window into the private world of a mourning dove family. Literally. You might call it the opposite of a bird’s eye view. The mother and father dove — we named them Lovey and Dovey — built a nest on the air conditioning unit outside our oldest daughter’s bedroom window. We could stand at the foot of the bed and lean toward the glass, our faces inches from the roosting mom or dad. A friend informed us both parents sit on the eggs. Until then we assumed — it’s sexist, I know — it was just the mom. More attentive now, we noticed differences. One was slimmer and more elegant; the other, well, a bit chunky. (Fun fact: mourning doves eat roughly 12 to 20 percent of their body weight per day. Dovey must take this to heart.) Their markings were similar, though, and each regarded us with a steely, blue-ringed, unblinking eye. If they were apprehensive at first, poised for flight, they got used to us. Or perhaps they, too, were trying to determine from our markings and size which was the female and which the male. In June, one of two eggs hatched and the young dove successfully took flight. We thought that was it for the patient pair, who perched atop the eggs — and later the baby — without fail. (Unlike human progeny, fledgling doves don’t appear to mind being smothered 24/7.) But my husband’s internet search revealed doves produce multiple broods a year. Sure enough, another egg appeared in a matter of weeks — a single egg this time (they typically have a clutch size of two, we discovered). The incubation period, we learned, is short — only 14 to 16 days. Not knowing when the egg first appeared, we worried. Day after day passed with no sign of a hatchling. What if the egg wasn’t fertile? How long would Lovey and Dovey sit on the egg before abandoning hope? Is there some instinctive timing mechanism triggered when all faith is lost? If a robin can hear a worm underground, surely a dove can detect inner workings of the life within. So we waited. And made frequent trips to the third floor. Finally, early one morning, I saw a tiny, ruffled head nestled up against its parent’s breast. I rushed downstairs to share the news with my husband. We rejoiced and named her (him?) Glory. The internet informed us doves leave the nest at about 11 or 12 days old. The parents no longer sit on them at night once they begin to self-regulate their body temperature. (This explains the “smothering” part.) We began to worry again. Fledgling doves are on the ground several days before they’re able to fly back up into a tree, according to our research. What if a predator got to Glory during this vulnerable stage? How could her parents allow her to leave the nest before she could even fly? Then we remembered: Even human children leave their homes not fully equipped for success in the adult world. That’s the beauty of combining nurture with nature; there are some skills they must acquire on their own. So we held our breath, knowing Lovey and Dovey prepared Glory to lead her very best dove life, same as we did — or tried, at least — for our own brood of three. Unlike our own children, Glory will never return to the nest, even for a visit. Lovey and Dovey, on the other hand, will stay together — or so the internet tells us — returning to the same nesting site year after year. In the meantime, we trust they’re still out there, feasting on the bounty of berry bushes and seed-bearing flowers in our backyard as they prepare for their next hatch. Occasionally we hear the haunting, mournful cooing sounds that earned them their name and catch a glimpse of their blue-speckled feathers as they flit from tree to tree. Their wings — another fun fact — make a whistling sound when they fly. We leave their nest undisturbed. When the time comes, we’ll return to our own perch on the third floor, patiently waiting and watching as the next life unfolds on the other side of the glass. This appeared in the Sept. 19 issue of the Grosse Pointe News.
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |