Success!

Notes:
2009-end of May, beg of June
Climbing hydrangea
Nikon D300 18-200mm
I mentioned a while back that a dove family had set up house in this nest in the climbing hydrangea at our front door. The last time they tried using the nest, the results were not good: the egg fell out and broke on the step before the baby bird had a chance to grow. We were concerned when we spotted an egg on the door step at the end of May (egg photos upper left, lower right were taken May 29th), but slightly optimistic as the shell wasn't cracked but as you see above. I googled to see if this was a good sign and apparently it's called pipping, where the baby bird pokes away from the inside until the shell parts (yay!). Still, we didn't see anything that would indicate a baby bird in the nest for quite some time, until June 6th in fact (the photo on the upper right was my first view of the little gaffer). The baby is growing very fast now, and to see the adult dove try to sit on or cover him is a funny sight: the adult dove sits up quite high and it's obvious that sharing that wee nest is becoming difficult. (The most recent photo is the bottom left, which I took a couple of hours ago.) It's been such a delight watching this unfold ... :-)