LightFeet, the tamest in the flight of wild doves in this forest, has often been in my office for long periods, but never anything like the length of time she spent there today.She came in at about half past nine in the morning and did not leave till five o'clock in the evening, so she was here for seven and a half hours. She ate and snoozed (mainly in her favourite place on a high shelf), and ate and snoozed, and ate and snoozed, and ate and snoozed.
She has for some time been coming in in the afternoons and eating voraciously, while her mate BigFeet2 has been coming in in the mornings and late evenings, so I think they must have been taking it in turns to feed a chick. Before that they would usually come in together.The appearance yesterday on the ground of a new chick and the sudden change in LightFeet's behaviour makes me think that she and her mate are the chick's parents, and now that it's on the ground they need not work for it as they have been.
But whatever the reason she had a very relaxing day, as you can see.
In both photos she is sitting on the edge of a high shelf above my desk, looking down at me as I work (the yellow cast on her feathers in the second shot is an artefact of the office light, which the flash did not entirely over-ride).
[Footnote: As the next post reveals, my assumptions about the sudden change in LightFeet's behaviour were, sadly, wrong. I profoundly wish that they had been right.]
