Mourning Dove Life Priorities
1. Love
1.5. Food
2. Cuddles
3. Food
4. Feed Child
5. Food
6. Freaking out together
7. Cooing to assert DOMINANCE
7.5. Food
8. Cooing just because
9. Empty Mind
10. "REFILL FEEDER" stare
.
.
.
1046. Acting skills
1047. Nest Architecture
A pic I found somewhere. Not exactly a mourning dove, but I think it still applies.
That's one of the better pigeon nests I've seen. 2/10 for actual bird nest. 8/10 for pigeon standards. Well done, birb.
I just put in a DuckDuckGo image search for "mourning dove nests" and the first results are so obviously AI generated that now I have an idea for using mourning dove nests as an AI detector that probably won't work but . . .
Biological expertise Turing test:
Bot: "Hi! I'm the subject matter expert you asked for. I have a Ph.D. in avian studies and can answer your question!"
Me: "Sure! Quick thing first, do you have a favorite picture of a mourning dove nest?"
Bot:
@phil_stevens @MichaelTBacon @Kishi @lxskllr
OH no... have chickens gone the way of the cuckoo and they are now exploiting the poor doves???
@MichaelTBacon @Kishi @lxskllr
I have so much contempt for the way that they make baby birds look "cuter"... IDK why but it really pushes my buttons.
Like... baby birds look scraggly for a reason. But there are people who just don't want to know anything that ripples their mind at all.
@futurebird @MichaelTBacon @Kishi @lxskllr Here's a couple of real fledglings I almost stepped on in our backyard last year. They blend in nicely with random mulch.
Mourning Dove parenting is basically "You're out of the egg? OK, you're out of the nest."
@stacey_campbell @MichaelTBacon @Kishi @lxskllr
Amazing photo. They are on the ground more often than you'd think. I saw some in the park today.
Yeah really. Bletch. A horror show indeed.
Also @imanijoy one of the survey questions was about CWs and here's an example of a great use of CW, that's well-supported by Mastodon's web UI behavior. Even once I expand the post, I don't see the image until I've clicked again to show it, so it's opt-in and if i do decide to see it I've read the framing in the rest of the post before seeing the image.
And, here's a place where CW creation could be a lot better -- a menu with common CWs like "AI image" to make it very easy, no typing required.
@futurebird @MichaelTBacon @Kishi @lxskllr those look more like ducks than dove chicks.
Some species' chicks are downright ugly (looking at you owls), but that's how they are. Definitely shouldn't make them "cuter".
AI can't do chicks: a thread. 1. Turtledoves https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/116586265333510280
@temptoetiam @futurebird @MichaelTBacon @Kishi
Kind of back to the future. Like the medieval illustrators that painted animals they never saw. I guess people will have more amazement to look forward to when they finally see what things really look like.
Finding killdeer nests is great fun. I haven't been on any conducive sites in a long time, but I always put stakes around the nest to hopefully protect it.
I don't know if that was good, bad, or indifferent. I never came back to find birds, but it was rare that I'd be in one location two days in a row. Probably better than having equipment walk over the nest.
@lxskllr @futurebird feral pigeons are descended from rock doves - they nest on flat cliffs and their nest requirements are: egg not roll off.
Mourning Doves do a better job than that. (I do a better job than that!)
I find bird nests low key amazing. Some I absolutely couldn't do in any kind of reasonable time frame, and I have wiggly digits and opposable thumbs. They do it all with their mouths, and I guess maybe their feet a little bit.
@futurebird managed to catch the last fledgling leaving the gazebo shelf nest this morning.
There is a perfectly good Robin nest up there, but she sat on a loose pile of sticks next to it for a month instead.
💯 ! Had mourning doves nesting next to our front door. Really dumb birds. At least the pigeon tried to arrange twigs.
Doves would lay an egg on a flat hard surface. Then they would fly away every time someone used the door. The egg would roll away, and fall off the second floor walkway.
They just kept... doing that. Next to the front door. Over and over. Literally the dumbest birds on the planet.
Poor things!
I felt sorry for them the first time. But the third? Fourth?
There was shrubbery 10 feet away.
myrmepropagandist
Matilda Love
Jaicup
a reproach of men and despised among the people
lxskllr
Samael 
Michael Bacon
bædling, lost in the moss
Phil Stevens 
Stacey Campbell
Jon
angst-ridden wanderer
Flipper 🐬🏳️🌈
Abie
Tuchowski
AI is Woke ™
Quinn Norton
Shar(yna)Tran/Shark(aeopteryx)
Mick 🇨🇦
Hteph
undead
Angela