We have a new boarder at our house. She was not invited, but welcome. She is not very bright, but entertaining. Not very capable, but persistent.

Our new roomie (although her room is outside.) is a bird. A dove to be precise. (even I can identify these...grin)

I don't know if this dove is representative of her sort, but she seems to fall way short of good homemaking skills. Her first issue was selecting a spot for home placement. She chose to build her nest on the tiny 4 inch brick ledge in the transom window over our front door. This allows us to have an excellent view of her activities, but not much stability for a nest. Now, we don't have any decent trees in our particular yard, but there are tons of wooded areas around us and certainly flying around in the sky these nice trees should be easily spotted. Maybe she had a bad realtor...I don't know.

Then came the actual construction of the nests. Yep, I meant that as a plural. No nice, neat and tidy home for this gal. She is on at least her second full attempt now. (She has been here a while.) It is difficult to determine when one attempt fails and the other begins because of the continual raining of nest material on the porch. The nest building is downright shoddy, folks. She takes coarse plant material and sits it on the ledge. No weaving or binding it together, just chunks it there...then it falls off.

She has a wad of plant stuff that she is sitting on right now. Quite contentedly looking, I might add. She has been very still for the last few days and Parker is convinced that she has laid an egg. I'm not sure the gene pool in this particular bird is connected enough to go on. We are hoping not to find an egg splatted on the porch.

On the plus side for us, we have enjoyed watching her efforts and she is pretty scenic nesting in the front window. She does not like lots of attention (We showed her to some friends yesterday and she flew off in a huff.) so we try not to ruffle her. We quit sweeping the porch as it was an unending task and are just observing. We are getting a bit attached to her. Maybe we will name her Frieda.

Mom had a bird nest over her front door last year. When all the four chickies hatched, it was adorable! (and a little messy) We would walk outside and four little faces would be staring down at us! I hope not in judgment. Good luck with your dim, but persistant nester!

How cute! It would be fun to have some tiny birdie faces peeping in!

Don't you wonder what SHE is blogging about in her little birdie blog world? "....these people keep staring at me. All I want is peace and quiet. My little birdie hiney hurts from trying to balance on this little tiny ledge! 'Hey, people, go fetch me some worms! A little help, here'"

(Talk about delusional, I should probably not comment anymore.....)

We have actually quit using the overhead light in the entry way because it seems to glare right in her little birdie eyes. Maybe she appreciates the gesture, maybe not.

Stephanie: each year a pair of doves attempts to build a nest on my FAN on the back porch. The first spring that they attempted this they got pretty far along with grass, etc piled up on the blades before I discovered them and turned the fan on. (It didn't hurt them, and they found a new place to nest.) Now every year the same pair comes back and tries it again. As soon as I spot them I turn the fan on and let it run for a few days to discourage them. (After all, I bought the fan for me not them...). Now when I read the passage about "innocent as doves" I have a slightly different perspective of what that means having encountered their persistent, but rather naive, behavior. John

How funny! Our window seems pretty stable compared to a ceiling fan!