Suburban Wildlife

Stephanie and I noticed a dove had taken up residence in the gutter outside of our bedroom window. I was soon apparent that this bird was sitting on newly furnished nest. At this same time I found a time-lapse movie app for Mac OS X called Gawker. We decided to use Gawker to answer some questions we had about our new neighbor.

This is what we found:

Does this one bird stay on the nest all day? -No, the pair rotate shifts of sitting and gathering food.

Is this the male or female? -Turns out the female spends more time on the nest and less time gathering. The male does play an important role in guarding the nest.

Can the chicks fly yet? -Yes, we do see periods when the nest is empty and the chicks are on the roof briefly.

The time-lapse video has been uploaded to YouTube.com and can be viewed here.