For the Birds

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The dove that kept wandering into my kitchen last week came back and brought her mate with her. They are now, as hoped, regular visitors, coming to our balcony three or four times a day to check for food.

The male is much more afraid of us than she is. He often seems to try to herd her away from us, literally chasing her in the opposite direction, as if to say, “What are you thinking?” He is bigger than she is, and I can tell them apart even more easily than by size, because he walks with hunched up shoulders and, in flight, shows gaps in his tail, where a couple of feathers are missing.

“How do you know the first one is a she and the other the he?” asked Demetrios.

“I don’t. I just decided.”

“No way to tell?”

“Not that I know of, without anesthetizing the bird.”

“Just affinity, then?”

No comment.

“Well, I say the first one is a he. On the same basis.”

Okay. But yesterday a third dove tried to join this pair, and the one I call HE chased it away, immediately and decisively. That seems to me to reinforce my own idea of who is who.

A sparrow or two has tried to join the feast on our balcony, as well. No way.

Here’s part of what I read about our Collared Doves:

The scientific name, Streptopeleia decaocto, literally means a collar (streptos) dove (peleia). In Greek mythology, Decaocto was an overworked, underpaid servant girl. The gods heard her prayers for help and changed her into a dove so she could escape her misery. The dove’s call still echoes the mournful cries of her former life.

This dove is larger bodied than the Mourning Dove, and has a distinctly different call, sounding like koo-KOOO, koo with the accent on the second beat.

“What’s that big bird over there with that long tail sitting on the television antenna?” asked Demetrios one evening as we sat on our balcony watching the twilight fall.

I couldn’t tell from that distance. But then it flew, and the wedge-shaped tail on that big, black body told the story: a Raven! A quick check of our bird book confirmed it; there are no other candidates in this area.

Even more thrilling, we watched as half a dozen of them came to roost in one of the trees our balcony overlooks; in fact, in the second nearest tree. They spend every night there. I don’t know where they go in the daytime; one never sees them around. I get up too late to see them leave their roost.

The other birds in our neighborhood, this time of year, are Pigeons, Magpies, Crows (a different kind from the ones in America; this crow has a black and grey body), and in the Spring, Scissor-tailed Swallows. They nest here, but winter in Africa. There are no gulls, even though we are only 6 short blocks from the sea, but the taverna (café) across the street is named, “The Cry of the Gull.” And across the street from that, in the building next to ours, is “The Drunken Duck,” well-named. Demetrios is praying it will close, because it generates a lot of noise some nights, into the wee hours.

As dusk falls, you can also see what you might easily mistake for birds, but their erratic flight pattern tells you they are bats. I don't know their species.