A wrong time to leave home...

...as the little dove popped out of the nest amid rain and freezing weather.

It is a Ringneck Dove baby, and it sat watching its new world.

We have had a very large cold front landing in the Cape, coming along with its cousins, rain, cold, and floods. I saw in the news that the first snow appeared on the Matroosberg mountains, and the mountains are a far way inland from where we live. But with the icy cold we think that soon the mountain range, in our bay, will also be getting some snow soon. I, for one, love the cold as it brings a great relief from our blazingly hot summers, but I think I am the only one as we see people walking around moaning and groaning, and dressed like Eskimos:))

Like I said, it was not a good time to come out of a nest in this weather.

The mom came to check on the baby.

But the baby was nonchalantly preening its feathers.

And the next two days were not better at all, as the rain gods beat down mercilessly on our part of the planet.

In the meantime, by then the baby could fly, and the mom popped in to feed it.

A bemused squirrel sat watching the new visitor, and the baby kept a wide space from the strange featherless critter.

We have a pair of Ringneck doves that have proclaimed our front garden as their territory, and we also had a few incidences over time of their babies popping down in the granadilla fence. So, one can only presume that the Ringneck's nest is hidden in the granadilla fence, but look as I may, I can't find it, so I have decided to let it be. At times it's best to leave things alone in nature, as if one starts to fiddle, it may alienate the birds and then they will depart forever. The babies also just stay here for two or three days, and then they also depart into the wild yonder. As always, on rainy days there are many predators, and the babies are at their most vulnerable, but thankfully they grow very quickly and then they can escape. The good news is that we now have a little Laughing dove that eats grated peanut bits, and it comes ever closer to us, as I will show you in another post.
Such is life.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.

Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.

Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.

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