Dove 05.09.16

            Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and our family was all together. It was decided that my wife of 47 years would not cook, instead we would go out for lunch. There were eight of us counting the two grand kids and we decided to go a little early in an effort to not stand in a long line.

            We arrived at the Long Horn steak house, a little after 11:00 and there was no line. I guess church wasn’t out yet. We enjoyed each other’s company, and the food was good.

My wife of 47 years, will need some help for the next couple months, if you would like to volunteer, picking up cans from the highway, as the cost of the food was, shall we say, elevated.

All in all, we had a good Mother’s Day, and hope you did also.

Here in the lone star state we have 3 types of doves. There is the regular dove like I use to hunt when we lived in Missouri. These doves are medium sized and when we first moved here they were everywhere. Now we see them occasionally.

There is a small dove, about the size of a sparrow and we seldom see this variety of dove.

When we first moved here there was very few white winged doves around but now, they are everywhere. These doves are the largest of the three doves, almost as big as a pigeon.

My reason for all this lead up info, these white wing doves are breeding and they are very noisy. As I was attempting to relax the other afternoon, after having been forced to do yard work, I was suddenly aware of a noise.

This noise sounded somewhat like hand clapping, but it was being produced by the wings of a dove. Evidently the male of the White Wing species, flaps his wings continually during this process. If there are any white wing doves around, and if they are breeding, you will know it.

As I was walking this morning, I was again introduced to that sound at a neighbor’s home. There must have been several sets of these doves in his tree as the sounds were very pronounced.

Speaking of birds, the birds are helping themselves to the black berries. I check the berries and see that there are some that are red and almost ready early morning, when I check back that evening the birds have taken them.

May your day be as nice, as you want it to be!

Don Ford