I have sharp-skinned hawks and and peregrine falcons, pick off my *chillins*. It’s sad, b/c the doves mate for life. But that’s nature.
“It’s sad, b/c the doves mate for life. But that’s nature.”
I have mourning doves that I put seed out for too. There’s another regional dove that I can’t remember the name of, and in recent years, some variety of Asian dove that’s here as well. But I really love having the Gambel Quail that come to feed on the seed. In the spring, I’ll see just one mated pair at a time show up, quickly fill their gullet, and then rush off. A few weeks later they’ll show up with a dozen or so little chicks, all about the size of an Eisenhower silver dollar, zipping back and forth around their parents as they learn what to eat. Some years I’ll have as many as a dozen pairs with all those chicks show up throughout the day.
Some pairs seem to have worse luck than others with their chicks as I notice their flock slowly decrease in size. After a few months, when all the chicks are almost adult sized, EVERYBODY shows up for breakfast and dinner at the same time. There’ll be 75 or so quail running around, plus all the various doves! I love it!
However, being ground nesting birds, their young are fairly easy pickings for a variety of predators. If a fox or coyote finds their nest, he can eat all the young in one sitting. Then there’s the roadrunners. They LOVE eating the baby quail, and are faster runners than the young quail who cannot fly yet. Since the roadrunners have their young at about the same time as the quail, once the 3 or 4 roadrunner eggs hatch, both parents are on a non-stop quest to catch every lizard, small rodent, large insect, and baby quail within a mile to feed their incredibly ugly chicks. I have no love for roadrunners. If a person is unfortunate enough that a roadrunner likes to regularly perch on a vehicle or part of their house, they will leave behind droppings that put a dozen city pigeons to shame.
For about the past 3 weeks I hardly see any quail or pigeons at all coming to the feeder. At first I figured one of the many feral cats had decided to make the feeder some sort of personal buffet as they have done in the past. But I didn’t see any more than the normal cats around. Then one afternoon, while I was out in my shop, I could hear all the quail eating at the feeder. Something spooked them again as they all flew off at once. So I went over to investigate. Sure enough, there was some kind of small bird of prey eating a quail. It saw me and flew off with its prize. The mystery was solved. The hawk, or whatever it is, has been parked near here now for about 3 weeks, which keeps all the quail and doves fearful, and in hiding. The feeder area remains mostly vacant of all my little friends. I’d be a liar if I’d say I haven’t thought of shooting the hawk, but I don’t want to do that, and instead now call the “bird feeder” a “hawk feeder”. This has happened before, and at some point the hawk will move away. I anxiously await that day!