sunrise habits of neighborhood doves

photo: jetheriot

Sprinkle birdseed outside your home religiously, and it won’t be long before you attract a crowd of regulars. I sprinkle birdseed on our back patio when I wake up each morning, and about thirty birds stop over for breakfast: doves, pigeons, sparrows, cardinals, usually at least one bluejay. The doves are addicted to my sunflower seeds. The sparrows love my millet.

When I walk out to the back patio with the scoop of seed in my hand, if the sun has started to rise, the doves are already pecking around, pecking at the bricks, wondering why there’s no seed on the ground. In their minds sunrise equals birdseed. They go by the sun’s clock. But the bluejay knows better. The bluejay knows that there’s a birdseed bringer -- me -- and that sunrise doesn’t always mean birdseed.

I walk out quietly, smoothly, to avoid frightening the doves, and I sprinkle birdseed softly on the brick floor. The doves panic easily, but if I move slowly enough I can avert a total freak-out, and they retreat to the wooden fence surrounding the patio where they sit and wait and fidget. The bluejay also waits, but serenely at a distance. Perched on the point of the neighbor’s roof, the highest point around, he adopts a more aerial view.

Once I’m back inside, the doves descend on the birdseed and gobble it up frantically. The bluejay is more deliberate. He squawks like a hawk for a while, then he swoops down in a step-wise progression from the roof to the fence to the old iron bed frame I grow vines around. Then he hops on the brick floor. Then he picks up a sunflower seed with his beak. Then he flies back to the bed frame where he bangs it against the railing, bangs it until its hull splits open to reveal the kernel inside. Then, holding the seed with his feet, he eats the kernel. The seed tastes good to the bluejay.

Tomorrow he'll wait on the point of the neighbor’s roof, not for sunrise, but for the bringer of birdseed.