WE HAVE A PROBLEM, MUM

It's not quite 'We have a problem, Houston,' but the latest addition to the flight of doves in my forest, a chick that appeared with the rest at breakfast-time this morning, has just found that fluttering down from the nest for the first time is not as easy as getting back up.

When the rest of the flight went up to their high roosts for the night the chick tried to follow them, but could not get more than a few centimetres off the ground. Its head bobbed about as doves' heads do when they are having a think or are worrying about something, and it was obviously doing both when it contemplated trying to fly just the three metres to the roof on that side of the building, but even that was too much. It had a wander to and fro, fro and to, to and fro, fro and to, to and fro, then tried again, but it was just too daunting. Fluttering is not flying, and fluttering is all it can manage, or summon up the courage for. And strong flying is needed to get to a treetop roost twenty or twenty-five metres off the ground.

It was too quick for me to catch it and take it up a ladder to the roof, so in the end it went under the building, as other new chicks have.

I hope there's no passing cat during the night. But it is better fledged than some other new chicks have been, so if it survives it should not be long before it gets the courage and the strength of wings to be what it is: a wild dove, born in the forest, a creature of air and tall green trees.

(Footnote, next morning: it was alive and well and wailing to every adult to be fed.)

DOVE NOTES

I constantly have to remind myself that the doves in my forest are wild birds, because of the extraordinary contrast every day between what they are and the way many of them behave.

Many will fly to my hand to feed contentedly without the slightest sign of fear. And, LightFeet, the friendliest of the flight (the collective noun for doves is a flight), often perches on me, both inside and out. One day she perched on my shoulder for an hour inside with her head tucked into my neck as her mate BigFeet2 is doing to her in the photo below. She even purrs (a sound I have not heard any of the others make).


And as I wrote this paragraph on the last day of 2012, RedFeet was behind me on the cover of my Yamaha keyboard, contentedly pecking at bits of food. A wild bird! She is another very tame one. And clever. She comes and knocks at the door with wings, beak or body when she is hungry, squeezes in as soon as I open it, and when she has had enough goes and stands by the door to be let out, and again squeezes through when the opening is only just wide enough. If I don't notice that she wants to go out she flies to my desk to get my attention.

RedFeet, like all these doves, loves cheese, (as do all the blackbirds in my forest). And she demands it. 'More, more!' she says behind me, and I know she means cheese and that she will not stop saying it over and over again, like an angelic Olivia Twist, until she gets it. And that is exactly what it sounds like: 'More!' in ever more urgent contralto tones, so I fill my hand with little cubes of Colby cheese, stretch it out and she flits
on to it to eat her fill. When BigFeet2 says 'More!' he means kibbled grain first and cheese afterwards, but RedFeet means 'Cheese! Now!'

Most of the names I have given them are to do with their feet, because that is the best way of telling them apart--often the only way--and makes their names easyt to remember. RedFeet has feet that are noticeably redder than the rest. Most of the flight have pink feet, ranging from a rather pale pink up to medium. She also has wider circlets than the rest (the flesh round a bird's eye is called the circlet). In doves it is sometimes grey, sometimes pinkish, sometimes a blend of the two colours. RedFeet's circlets are the widest of the flight, so much so that she always looks wide-eyed. WideEyes could have been her name. LightFeet was given her name after I had named BigFeet2, and was called that because in contrast to him she has lightly-feathered feet and legs.

Her mate is bossy DarkFeet, so named because his feet are a darkish red. He is the biggest bird in the flight, and by far the biggest eater. He could eat the rest under the table. He often comes inside too, frequently with BigFeet2, who is regularly the first to come inside in the mornings. (He was given that name because he was the second dove to be born here who had such well-feathered feet that it made them look big--and beautiful.)

Clever BigFeet2's morning visits have become very regular. I go out, feed the flight, and usually when I come back to my door to find him waiting to come in, because he knows that his favourite food will be on the Yamaha cover (the grain part of toasted muesli). He eats, asks for more, or flits to my desk and gazes hopefully at me with his beautiful eyes, until he has had enough. Then he settles down on the Yamaha cover for an hour or two for a digesting snooze and a grooming session, and/or flies up to a higher place in my office and does the same.

My doveish days begin with the flight either waiting outside my door or descending from the tall trees to be fed as soon as I emerge. To have about twenty doves flying down to you is always a special moment. Mrs Friendly 1 (because she was the first to fly to my hand when the first eight doves came here about three years ago), whose name later became abbreviated to F1, perches on my left hand, the one holding the crusts, so that she will get more than the others as I tear off bits for the flight gathered round me. BigFeet2 perches on my knee so that he will get more too, but far enough from F1 so that she will not be able to squabble with him. When he was younger and had not quite perfected flying to my knee he would fly to my left shoulder and slither down to my knee with wings beating.

Of course many of the adult birds were eating for more than just hemselves earlier in the season. Like other members of the pigeon family they feed their young on 'pigeon-milk,' which looks rather like thin grey porridge. I am sure that one pair had three chicks, because there are three chicks that like to keep together, so that would have kept their parents very busy--and very thin--because young doves are usually quite big and well-fledged before they come down and start to discover how to eat for themselves.

I am intrigued at their different personalities. I took biology at school and zoology at university, but I had always thought of birds as birds. Pretty much all the same. But they are not. They each have their own ways and habits, their own characters. I had had very little to do with animals before the blackbirds and doves came to me because I dislike household pets of any sort. I loathe dogs, and cats only annoy me (especially
when the odd stray tries to get at these doves--and is very soon seen off, at speed). 'Over-rated' and very unnatural is my summary of the entire dog-cat domestic regime. But wild animals, doing what they do out in the natural world, being themselves, but sometimes choosing to become a little tame, is perfect. They stay wild. Even LightFeet is still a wild bird. I am just part of her wilderness. Wild me and wild her.

There used to be a female blackbird that fed from my hand for many years after I managed to tame her sufficiently with Colby cheese, and she brought many clutches of chicks to me over the years, who also became quite tame. I read up on blackbirds and learned that they can live for about twenty-five years, but she must have died because she hasn't been here for well over a year, and although they mate for life her mate has had another mate for about that long. She was my Mrs Friendly in the blackbirds, and she deserved the name because she would often stand a short distance from my hand for a very long time after she had eaten. She obviously liked being there. She would sometimes put one foot on my fingertip when she was feeding.

Now her descendants scoot round the doves, nervously grabbing what they can, because doves are bigger and more numerous and move towards them when they think 'their' food is in danger of vanishing down a blackbird's throat.

21 DOVES AND 3 NEW CHICKS

It has been a while since I was greeted in the morning by twenty-one doves flying at me and crowding round me. Some of the adults that used to come have gone somewhere else, so the numbers dropped off. They tend to spread out in the breeding season, and some must have now gone too far away to be including my part of the forest in their territories.

But those that remain still include my special favourites, LightFeet (who is on a broad shelf above me as I write this) and her mate BigFeet2 (although his foot-feathers are not as long as they used to be so his feet do not look as big as they did when he was a chick two years ago).

The twenty-one this morning included the second lot of chicks that have come down, three altogether.

One came down much sooner than normal. It either fell or was pushed out of the nest and I found it trying to make its way about on the ground, wailing to be fed. I suspect that it was the smallest in a clutch of three and as its siblings grew there was no longer enough room for it. But for whatever reason it was not nearly as well fledged as chicks normally are when they come down for the first time. They can usually fly. It could not, even walking was not easy, and there was a lot of red skin visible. I picked it up and took it up to where the other doves were; it tried every one of them to get fed, and none did, so none were either parent.

At night it went under the building and found a place to sleep in leaves that had drifted in there. The flash makes it look like day but it was of course black night and it was asleep. To my relief no stray cat or rat got at it, and it must have found a parent, because it grew. One night I saw an adult with it, keeping it company. How sweet!

Then it was joined by what seem to be its siblings. One I call HugeFeet2, because the feathers on its feet stick out so far that it looks as if it has huge feet and there was already a HugeFeet in the first chicks this season. The other I call Flecks because it has flecks of black across the top of its tail.

They move about so fast that it is hard to tell, but it seems that all three are being fed by the same adult, and they like to be together, and nestled together underneath at night, so I think they are siblings.

HugeFeet2

HugeFeet2

HugeFeet2 soon learnt to peck up food from the ground, as you can see, then Flecks worked it out. Even the little one has now. It is funny to see them crying and flapping their wings at the ground at first as if it were a parent and they had to persuade it to feed them in the same way..


But they still cry to their parents and get fed, so they are not yet completely self-sufficient. But why bother pecking at little bits on the ground if you can be stuffed full in nothing flat by a parent? (Doves are members of the pigeon family, which feed their young beak-in-beak on 'pigeon milk': partly-digested food. It looks a bit like thinnish porridge. Chicks put their beaks into their parents' beaks and their parents regurgitate the food straight down their throats.)

Here is Flecks feeding from the ground this morning and later being fed by a parent.

LEARNING WILD DOVES

The wild dove that has been in my office more than any other is the one I call LightFeet (because her feet, or more accurately her legs, are lightly feathered, in contrast to her mate BigFeet2, who has thickly feathered feet and legs, even more thickly than BigFeet1). She is the tamest of the wild doves in my forest, and has been since she was a chick two years ago. She will perch on my arm or shoulder for a long time, even for hours. But she has never, till now, been able to work out how to get out of my office. We have always had to go through long rigmarole, in which she flies up to something higher than the Yamaha keyboard, which might be my head to start with, or something higher up, and looks about all over the place, and finally, if I hold the outer door open long enough and often enough, gets the message and goes out, sometimes on foot, sometimes on the wing.

But RedFeet worked it out very quickly. She goes and stands by the door, the side where it opens, so she knows which is which, and if I do not notice her she flies up to my desk to get my attention, then back down to the door after I get the message and rise to let her out.

She even comes and knocks on the door when she wants to be let in. It took me a while to realise that the thud or peck on the lower corner of the door, again on the side that opens, was her. So now when I hear that I open the door, and she is so eager to get in that she squeezes through when it has only opened just enough.

In recent weeks the two have been coming in together, and LightFeet has watched what RedFeet does and now copies it.

The two cannot be in the same place at the same time, so LightFeet flies up to 'her' territory, the Yamaha, and RedFeet stays on the floor. She knows that if she flies to the Yamaha when LightFeet is there she will be bundled off.

RedFeet's mate, DarkFeet, knows the same thing, but for him the competing bird is LightFeet's mate, BigFeet2, who always flies to the Yamaha. DarkFeet knows not to go there if BigFeet2 is there, although he will sometimes try it on, but when I point to the floor he will go back down. Or BigFeet2 may get to him first and bundle him off with loud protests.

When I go outside in the morning I am greeted by a melee of doves. Fourteen this morning, plus the new chick, which has a fine line of short feathers down each side of its legs, so I call it LineLegs.

After the feeding melee, with doves all about me and on me, a beautiful sea of white bodies and excited wings, some will come inside.

First in is BigFeet2, because he knows he will get more food than if he stays outside with the others. Later in the morning LightFeet and/or RedFeet come in. Or DarkFeet. In the afternoon the same birds will come in. DarkFeet or BigFeet2 are usually the last ones, often not leaving till it is getting dark, which surprises them a bit, because they go out of a well-lit room into the twilight.

All the doves are all cheesaholics (so are the blackbirds). LightFeet, RedFeet and BigFeet2 actually ask for cheese. Literally sometimes. A coo and an expectant look means 'I want cheese, not rolled oats or muesli grain. Cheese! Now!' They know where it comes from. The fridge. So when I go off to the fridge they look expectant and get excited.

I turn my back when I'm cutting it into small cubes, so that they don't fly into what is, first and foremost, my food. But LightFeet often tries to get round that by flying to my shoulder and looking over it.

If she and RedFeet are inside together I have to divide the cheese and hold it out in both hands sufficiently apart to prevent a small battle. LightFeet will fly to one hand, RedFeet to the other.

When there is no more I hold out my hands, empty, they scan them, look disappointed, and wait for more if they have not had enough. Sometimes a bird will gorge itself so much that it will have to massage its crop and stretch upwards about to settle it all down.

Wild doves outside, in my dwelling-place, on my hands. Every day, several times a day. Special times. Dove times.

FRINGES ON A LEDGE

Fringes is learning. As darkness approached I saw that instead of the ground it had chosen a broad ledge on the side of the building on which to spend the night. Safety! :-)

FRINGES FEEDS

Fringes again spent the night on the ground in its favourite spot--safely, to my relief. In the morning fourteen adult doves came down to feed when I emerged. I assume that the lower numbers means that there are several sitting on nests. And some adults are eating fit to bust but are staying slender, so they must be feeding chicks somewhere.

At first this morning there was the normal melee when they are all scrambling over each other to eat bits of Colby cheese from my hands, followed by bits of bread. Then I scatter rolled oats about. When they were eating the latter Fringes came and joined them and ate too, making the plaintive 'Feed me!' cries to the ground instead of a parent. Earth Mother?

It had tried a little bit of other food on the ground yesterday, rather hesitantly, but today was the first time it had joined the rest and fed with them (I have yet to work out if it is male or female). Quick learner...

I hope it will not be long before it learns that doves go high up into the trees for the night. A parent has been lingering with it until almost dark but it has yet to get the message and follow.

Till it does, stay away cats and dogs!

FRINGES BENEFITS

'Fringes,' the first of the spring chicks, did survive its all-night stay on the ground, and after making plaintive pleas to adult after adult after adult I saw it find at least one parent, and be fed. :-)

FIRST CHICK OF SPRING

I went out at twilight, and found three doves on the ground. Two obviously knew me, but the third, a smaller bird, did not know what to make of this large creature. I soon realised from its ceres, the stains of pigeon milk down its breast, and its plaintive cries that it was the first chick I have seen this spring.

I managed to get a photo of it, although it was just after six so the light was too dim for a good shot, but I did not want to use a flash for fear of frightening it. Adult birds do not mind a flash but it has never seen one.

It obviously did not know what to do, or how to get back to its nest. It must have followed another bird down, but not back, so it had to settle down in a hollow between roots where it will have to spend the night. I'm glad the black cat that had been trying to get at the doves vanished months ago. I hope it survives.

The new bird has distinctive feathering on its legs and feet--rather like the fringes some cowboys had on their leather pants, so I shall call it Fringes.

DOVES: ILLNESS, RECOVERY, AND DEATH

In late July I noticed that the dove I call Placida, because she has an unusually placid nature, even for a dove, was standing apart from the rest, not looking happy. Later, when I found her on the doorstep shivering I let her inside. Her behaviour, and her pale beak, showed plainly that she was not well, and she ended up staying inside for two nights and nearly two days, while I looked after her, hand-feeding her with food and water. After that she left of her own accord and was back to her old self.

A week or two into August I noticed that another did not look happy. This one had a decided limp, and her head-feathers had been stained a ginger colour--I assume by rainwater dripping through epiphytes above where she roosts at night--so I dubbed her Limping Ginger. She had no mate, which is why her head-feathers were never cleaned; only the birds with mates to groom their heads can keep them white.

I thought at first that the reason she was favouring her left leg was because she had injured it somehow, perhaps by coming in for a heavy landing one day. But she did not lose her limp, and because that was affecting her balance she took to nestling for the night on the doorsill--obviously because if she had roosted on tree-branch for the night and had lost her balance she would have fallen uncontrollably into the dark unknown.

But she carried on eating, even being in the thick of the breakfast melees in the mornings, so I thought she would get over her limp and get back to normal. Her variable balance did prevent her from grooming herself properly because she would soon fall on her beak or her side, so she became very unkempt, especially at the end of her tail.

Two days ago she came inside, and pecked about, but as evening came she was obviously not interested in going back into the cold air for the night, so she stayed inside. She went off her food yesterday, but she took water from time to time, and I expected that what happened to her would a repeat of what had happened to Placida. She would stay inside till she recovered.

Last night her eye was bright, and she seemed alert, and as late as ten o'clock she was pecking up bits that I had put down on the floor for her. But at eleven I noticed that her breathing had become quicker and shallower, which was worrying.

I woke not long after four this morning and rose to check on her, and to my dismay found that she had died. At the very first of first light I took her out and buried her in the forest at the foot of the large boulder where I had buried the other doves that had died.

There is something especially poignant about the death of a dove.

WAIHEKE AND ROCKY BAY DO NOT EXIST!

In 1642 Abel Tasman was the first to put pen to paper and make a map of any part of New Zealand. In 1769 James Cook was the first to make a complete map of the country, albeit from sea. New Zealand dates its founding as a nation from the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the British Crown and the native Maoris in 1840.

But 370 years after Tasman, 243 years after Cook, and 172 years after the Treaty, New Zealand still does not have a complete official map. With GPS we can found out where we are in any place in the country to within centimetres, but there are tens of thousands places whose names we do not know, at least officially. Officially they do not exist.

For a placename to be official in New Zealand it must have been approved and gazetted by the New Zealand Geographic Board. But the Board has done that for only 7500 names. Important ones, such as Wellington (New Zealand's capital city), Auckland (its biggest city), North Island, South Island, etc., etc.,--tens of thousands of names have yet to be placed officially on the map.

(Actually 'North Island' has been gazetted, but not for the North Island of the country, the northernmost of its three main islands where most of the population lives; only for some obscure little dot in the Mutton Bird islands in Fouveaux Strait way down near the southernmost tip of New Zealand!!! So to be strictly legal you cannot say that Auckland and Wellington and many other places are in the North  Island, because they are not on that tiny Mutton Bird island--nor could they be: they cannot fit.)

Everyone, surely, has the right to live in a place that has an official name. Otherwise you cannot have an address, an identifiable property, no one can find you, emergency services may not be able to serve you, your mail may never come or go astray, etc.

There are three categories of names in New Zealand: official (gazetted), unofficial ('recorded'), and neither. 'Recorded' only means that the Geographic Board is of the opinion that a name has been mentioned at least twice on what it regards as an authorative map or database, but it has yet to be officially approved and recognised. It does not officially exist in law.

'Waiheke Island' is only recorded, and therefore has no official legal status. 'Rocky Bay', despite the fact that it has appeared on many maps and databases since at least 1877 has not even been recorded.

That is why at last night's meeting of the Waiheke Local Board I sought its support for putting Rocky Bay on the map. What follows is the written submission made to the board, which was supported by copies of old maps held in the Auckland War Museum Library that are too big to be shown here.


REQUEST TO THE WAIHEKE LOCAL BOARD
TO SUPPORT AN APPLICATION TO THE NEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHIC BOARD
TO APPROVE AND GAZETTE FOUR WAIHEKE PLACENAMES

* Omiha/Rocky Bay as the dual name of that village.
* Omiha Bay/Rocky Bay as the dual name of that bay.
* Whakanewha Bay as the name of the bay on the edge of Whakanewha Regional Park
* Omiha Point as the name of the unnamed point at the northern end of Rocky Bay

Wendy Shaw, the Secretary of the New Zealand Geographic Board, told me in early July this year that only 16,000 placenames in New Zealand have been approved and gazetted by the Board, a further 35,000 have been recorded (acknowledged but not approved and gazetted), which leaves an unknown number in neither category. But in fact the Geographic Board's website lists only 7500 that have been approved and gazetted. 'Wellington' and 'Auckland' are just two of myriads that have yet to be approved and gazetted--but the North Shore suburb of Chatswood has been! It is very disappointing to find that in 2012 this country has such a mess of a map.

Included in the myriads in that third-level Black Hole is Rocky Bay as the name of the bay and the village, and Whakanewha Bay.

The system operated by the New Zealand Geographic Board is cumbersome. The application form is not well designed, a separate application must be made for every name (even when approval is being sought for a clutch of names in common use, and even if those have been recorded), and the Board meets only a few times a year, and may defer decisions indefinitely. So the process can be long and tedious.

The Waiheke Community Board has received an odd letter from the Geographic Board about a straightforward application that was made a year ago. The wording is odd, and the determination is quite wrong because the Board's advisors misread the application, which was for what heads these notes--for dual names. But they misread it as an application to replace Omiha Bay with Rocky Bay.

Many problems can of course be caused by wrong names on maps, and when names have not been gazetted, or even recorded, there is no authoritative source to correct errors. Therefore names in common daily use, even ones with a long and authoritative provenance, may be rejected by officialdom, which can cause day-to-day problems and may make emergencies more dangerous.

The worst day-to-day problems I have personally experienced were caused by the fact that New Zealand Post refuses to recognise placenames that have not been gazetted or recorded. 

In Rocky Bay only 'Omiha' has any kind of recognition, because it has been recorded, although not gazetted. None of the names sought here have been gazetted.

Starting in 2008 I had contact with a David Wilson, who glories in the title of Senior Addressing Support Analyst at New Zealand Post and sets the rules for addressing mail. He refuses to allow Rocky Bay, because it is neither recorded nor gazetted, and he enforces his rule with they threat of disqualification for the bulk-mailing discount. His reach is long and wide, and includes overseas entities such as National Geographic and Dell. So if people who live in Rocky Bay fill in their address as 'Rocky Bay' they are very likely to find it changed to Omiha. That caused me a nasty problem when Dell sent some expensive hardware that never arrived. Dell clearly thought that I had received them, and was lying to get them without fulfilling my side of the bargain. I finally tracked them down gathering dust in a bin somewhere in Christchurch, which also has an Omiha. On that occasion I knew that mail had gone astray. Very often we would not. How much has, and for how many people, is impossible to tell. 

At one stage I was even disenfranchised--removed from the electoral roll--because of the compulsion organisations are put under by the Post Office, and the electoral computer would not accept my address.

But regardless of such problems it is clearly most unsatisfactory to have a situation where well-established placenames are not recognised, not approved, not gazetted, and therefore rejected by various officials. So I ask the Waiheke Local Board to support this application to the New Zealand Geographic Board.

As you can see from the historical maps supplied to me by Paul Monin who got them from the Auckland War Memorial Museum Library, 'Rocky Bay' for the bay, 'Omiha' for the village area, and 'Whakanewha Bay' for the big bay along the edge of Whakanewha Regional Park, all have provenance going back at least as far as 1877.

The Honourable Sandra Lee says 'Omiha' was a Maori princess from another tribe who was captured by the tribe that lived in Rocky Bay and subsequently married a man from it, which reconciled the two tribes. We should obviously honour that positive heritage.

In law New Zealand has three official languages, including English and Maori of course, and therefore with that dual historical provenance it is fitting to have dual English and Maori names. For the bay itself, Rocky Bay has provenance going back to at least 1877, and Omiha Bay has been recorded in recent times. It would therefore be proper to gazette both of them. Then Post Office bureaucrats would have to accept Rocky Bay, and there could be no valid confusion in the emergency services. Whakanewha Bay also has provenance back to at least 1877. And naming the unnamed point at the northern end of Omiha Bay/Rocky Bay as Omiha Point would further honour the much older Maori provenance (Sandra says it goes back centuries).

Then Rocky Bay would be officially gazetted twice: as the English name of the village and the English name of the bay. And Omiha would officially be in the area four times: gazetted as the Maori name of the village and the bay and the name of its northern point, as well as in Omiha Road.

Obviously there are many placenames on the island that must be officialised until every single one has been put firmly on the map, but this four-fold application for Rocky Bay is as good a place as any to start, and a start on it has already been made, and therefore it needs only the Local Board's approval to continue to its proper, gazetted conclusion.

Then Rocky Bay and Whakanewha Bay will be up there with Chatswood and Rat Island...

.......

Update: That was the grand plan. But the Waiheke Local Board proved itself incapable of making such a simple, obvious decision, pulled the old trick of asking for 'officials' to make a report, got the do-nothing report it wanted, and decided to do that. Nothing. So we remain down there, with the nameless rats: the bureauc-rats.

A DOVE CHICK IN WINTER!

When I went out into the forest this morning I was as usual soon surrounded by many doves wanting to be fed, but to my surprise from somewhere in the midst of the flight I could hear the plaintive sounds of a chick. In winter!? But after a time I managed to look at it closely enough for long enough to see that its ceres were pink, so it is definitely a chick (ceres are the bulges at the top of the beak, and in doves they are pink in chicks then turn whitish when when the birds mature)

A chick in July! How did its parents keep the egg then the new-hatched unfledged youngster warm enough for it to survive!?

Later when I went into my office the adult female that I have named Placida because she has such placid nature came in too, and after pecking about for a while flew up to the fax-machine for a snooze as is her habit.

After about twenty minutes she started looking about, which usually means she wants to go outside, so I opened the outside door for her. She ignored it, but another dove took the opportunity to come in. When I closed the door that one took off and flew round my office, beautifully fluttering with tail spread, but not like any other dove had ever done when inside. This one was flying high up near the ceiling, and the way she was her flying was different. When she landed on something high up I saw to my surprise that it was the chick. So already she is tame enough to come inside. (I presume she is a female)

When she came down, she busied herself with studying her new environment, but she was not very nervous, and when I opened the door she calmly made her way out.

Placida is still here as I write this two hours later, dividing her time between snoozing and attending to her feathers and exploring the floor to try to find something to eat.

So there must now be twenty-one doves in my part of this great forest, because there have been twenty adults many times recently in the mornings and today there were nineteen plus the chick, so there was an adult missing.

If this flight of doves have begun breeding and multiplying this early I can expect to be overwhelmed by them by the end of the summer. Twenty-one could easily become twice or thrice as many. What a delightful fate--to be overwhelmed by doves!