One afternoon a month or so ago I pulled in the driveway and the Youngest Island Boy came running up to the car telling me there were baby birds in the back yard. The Island Girl and I went into the back yard and there sitting on the patio table were two baby doves. They were still too young to fly but there they were sitting on the table.
It was obvious that they’d fallen from the tree above the table and got lucky by landing on the table. We could see the broken remains of a nest on a limb above the table but the momma was no where in sight. I don’t know if something got after them and knocked the nest over or what happened but it was obvious we couldn’t just
leave them there. We went inside and got the Island King to help us decide what to do. He did a little research on the internet and tells me that the belief that if you put a bird back in the nest it’s mother won’t feed it is a myth. Ok, so we could put them back in their nest, except that the nest is broken and will never hold them.
I guess it’s time to build a nest.
Lucky for us Buddy (the bone headed Beagle) ate a wicker trash basket the night before and we were able to retrieve the remains of the basket from the trash to use as our base. We had the boys round up pine straw and leaves and Island Girl got out the yarn. I don’t know why we used yarn but we use yard in everything we make so it was just a given that we’d put yarn in the nest. Island Girl stitched the basket pieces together 
we added some pine straw and yarn
topped it off with some leaves
and it turned out really well.
Add some baby birds and there you have a bird’s nest.
The next big challenge was how to get the nest back up into the tree.
We got the tallest ladder we own
and then I spent a lot of time convincing the Island King that standing on the very top of the ladder isn’t really as dangerous as people think and promising to throw the children under him if he fell to help break his fall. It took some fast talking on my part but I managed to get him up there. He carried the nest, babies and all, to the top of the ladder, and got it situated along a tree limb and then used some yarn to tie the nest to the limb.
Once the nest was secured we started hoping their mother would come and feed them. We left the ladder there and every afternoon the Island King would climb up and check on them. They didn’t seem hungry even though we never saw mom around. After a couple of weeks the birds were flying in and out of the nest and seemed healthy. I never saw her, but obviously mom was feeding them. They’ve moved out of the nest now and have joined the other doves that eat all of my tomatoes and figs. I’m not happy about the figs but I’m glad they survived their fall.Labels: Done
