December 27, 2011

Looking back at 2011 – January and February

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A lot happened at Morning Bray Farm this year. When I sat down yesterday to reminisce by looking through blog posts, the magnitude of the changes here really hit me. 

The blessing of Patrick came to us in March, followed by our beautiful Muscovy ducklings in April. Fergus left us in July, we adopted our BLM beauty Gracie Belle in August, and Buck arrived in October.

Whoa. It all happened so fast.

Last night, Don and I went through and picked our favorite blog photos/moments from 2011. We’ll share our picks this week. If you click on any of the photos, you’ll be taken to the original blog posts.

January 2011

The fabulous four:

Fergus was such a character:

He did an excellent James Cagney impersonation:

Sandhill crane:

February 2011

Our sleeping beauty:

Our first baby of 2011:

 

February 23, 2011

The first baby of 2011

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Morning Bray Farm announces our first baby of 2011, an Eurasian-Collared Dove.

She made her out-of-the-nest debut yesterday.

Spring’s just around the corner. ♥

 

January 18, 2011

It’s all in the details

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When I said I was pretty sure this is a Mourning Dove, I was wrong.  Au contraire, my friends… turns out she’s a White-winged Dove. Thanks, CeeCee!

No surprise, it’s all in the details. White-winged Doves have white stripes on their wings.

Eurasian-collared Doves are lighter in color and have napes ringed with a half-black collar. Mourning Doves are medium-sized with gray-brown wings with black spots.

Honestly, I would’ve never thought there were three unique dove species here at Morning Bray Farm. If I wasn’ t blogging, I might have never realized it. ♥

p.s. Don just looked at what I was blogging and asked me if the name of this post was going to be I’m suddenly obsessed with doves and I don’t know why. ♥

 

July 10, 2010

Saturday Stuff – A new dove to me

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We have a dove nesting above one of the light fixtures in the barn. Not surprising due to the fact that we have a plethora of doves here.

One of the things I’ve come to love about blogging is that I learn so much – not only because I’m always looking things up to be accurate in my posts, but also because I’m constantly learning new things from all of you.

I found the screeching calls of the  doves in Albuquerque very strange until I took the time (only yesterday!) to identify our barn dove. She’s not a Mourning Dove. She’s a Eurasian Collared-Dove and has a very different voice than a Mourning Dove.

Some interesting facts about Eurasian Collared-Doves from whatbird.com:

  • The Eurasian Collared-Dove is one of two species that have been argued to be the wild ancestor of the domestic Barbary Dove.
  • Their 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.
  • Introduced into the Bahamas in the 1970s, some migrated to Florida in the 1980s. They went unnoticed at first because they look much like the Ringed Turtle-Dove. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that ornithologists realized the suddenly prolific and quickly spreading “turtle-doves” they were watching were actually Eurasian Collared-Doves. Their impact on native species is unknown; some have suggested that their spread represents exploitation of a niche made available by the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon.
  • A group of doves has many collective nouns, including a “bevy”, “cote”, “dole”, “dule”, and “flight” of doves.