Not expected or in any way intended, however last night was a windy one and plenty of green debris was lying around this morning. At the front of the house there was a bird’s nest on the ground, but no sign of it’s previous inhabitants.
Late this afternoon I was checking the dogs in the yard when I became aware of them being intrigued by a noise underneath the caravan. The noise turned out to be a young dove that the pups were trying to be friends with.
Hence tonight Kate and I have something else to tend to. It’s a surprisingly calm creature, quite happy to perch on your hand or finger, whilst stubbornly refusing to eat the liquidised porridge oats being proffered in a syringe.
We had initially tried to feed it worms that I had recovered from underneath stones in the front garden. I’d made my best attempt to mimic a mummy dove, but after a while off just getting worms to crawl all over the dove’s head, I took a slightly more proactive approach. That meant trying to force the beak open and then trying to encourage the worm to crawl down the welcoming throat.
Unsurprisingly, the worm was as unkeen to help out as the dove.
Probably just as well, as at this point Kate found a website that suggested that earthworms could be poisonous for doves. Not surprising it wasn’t keen to swallow a wriggler.
The advice was to feed mashed oats through a syringe, which is what we did, though it’s not easy to suck oats up through a small syringe. It’s made no easier by the bird steadfastly refusing to swallow anything. Possibly in case it contained pureed earthworm.
Fortunately we got a rhythm going and the dove started to eat a reasonable quantity. Hopefully it’ll make it though the night, though if it does we’ll have to take it to Wetheral as I don’t think we could really use a pet dove.
Odd.
I’ve just been outside to shut away the hens and ducks. Nothing unusual there.
However I walked around the back of the stables in order to shut the horses away and discovered one of our saucepans on the ground near the back gate. I wonder what that was doing there.