Readers’ wildlife photos

My friend Anne-Marie Cournoyer, who lives in Montreal with her delightful husband Claude (they hosted me when I visited and took me on a great tour of the city), has been monitoring a nest of mourning doves in her yard this summer. Here’s her series of photos and notes (indented):

August 2020 brought us a wonderful surprise. A handsome couple of mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) chose a branch in a tree just next to my home office window to set up their nest, giving us the opportunity to follow day-by-day their child-raising activities.  As you will see, the pictures were taken through the window, from the start of the incubation period up to the day the grown-up chicks left the nest. We were very careful not to disturb them, letting the parents and chicks become more and more comfortable with our presence.

I have tagged the pictures with the date they were taken [lower right, in French]. The first chick came out on the 8th day of the month followed by the second on the next day. Twenty days later, the fully grownup birds left our backyard tree, and moved to the large oak tree in our front yard. We can still see them once in a while hanging out around the house. What a wonderful experience it was to witness their growth in such a short period.

Note that the entire sequence below lasts only 17 days—from new hatchling (3 days old) to fledgling.