Gulf Coast Family

by Joy and Jerry Lancaster

Ahhhh! There is actually an occasional cool breeze in the air, and this is a sign that our favorite season is just around the corner. We love the Fall season, even if we ARE in Florida, meaning we must only decorate our living room with garlands of artificial colored leaves. We still get a festive feeling even from our feeble human attempts to enjoy the fall foliage!

Outside on our front porch, we have been observing another sign of preparing for the coming season. We have a couple of mourning doves who have taken up residence there. There is a very small “eave” near the ceiling of our porch, not really big enough for a nest, but for several years now, we have observed this mother dove as she continues to come back to the same spot. She will sit on a very frail looking nest as she awaits the arrival of her babies. The first time she built the nest, and we saw the “residue” left on our walls, we waited until she was gone one day, and we brushed the nest down with a broom. Never fear, we did make sure there were no eggs in the nest first! Several days later, there she was again, sitting on a few twigs, only THIS time, the daddy dove was sitting there with her, with his wings spread over her. We were “hooked”, and VERY ashamed of ourselves! We began researching the habits of mourning doves and found that they mate for life and will build their nest in the same location year after year. These are some of our observations we have made of our dove “couple”:

• Daddy dove will do a “sick bird in the yard” routine and squawk and flutter his wings to distract us when we come outside for any reason.

• Many times Daddy is sitting on the nest while Mommy takes a break

• This is probably the 5th or 6th attempt of these doves to raise a family, but we have never seen any baby doves, only broken eggs on the floor, and twigs scattered around them.

We have become cheerleaders for Mr. and Mrs. Dove! We would love to see them be able to produce some baby birds after all their attempts. We have also been smitten with the knowledge that we humans can learn several valuable lessons from these, some of the least of God’s creations:

• “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again!”

• Establish your home with good, strong “building materials”

• Mom and Dad, share responsibilities in the home

• Work together, don’t tear each other down!

• Make your home a “soft place to fall” where family members feel sheltered.