There Are Pigeons Nesting in My Pigeon Spikes.

I feel obliged to tell you that I don't like pigeon spikes. I don't like the way they make every ledge and sign look like some Lilliputian Thunderdome.

And I actually like pigeons. Longtime readers of my blog will remember how delighted I was to discover that first nest of them on my porch. I even asked you to name the babies.

But nest after nest of chicks convinced me that this was not some rare and fragile miracle. This was not Pale Male nesting on Fifth Avenue. My porch was more like an especially unsanitary inner city maternity ward.

Unsanitary because I've learned, and I don't think there's a delicate way to phrase this, that pigeons produce an astonishing amount of waste. They'd turned the columns flanking my house into two abstract expressionist monoliths, like exactly the sort of crapcentric art installations that make Republicans want to defund the NEA.

So, pigeon spikes. And now pigeons nesting in what was apparently not the appropriate amount of pigeon spikes. Those chicks above were fledged a couple weeks ago, so I went up the ladder to install stronger defenses. But they'd already rebuilt the nest. And the mother in it would not leave. I didn't take this with any kind of zoom. I was this close.



Eventually I was too close, and the pigeon lunged at the brush I'd brought to clear away the twigs and droppings. So for a moment I could see that she'd been hiding two new and dandelion-yellow chicks.

So, back down the ladder. I'll try again in a few weeks.

They Grow Up So Fast

Previously, I presented the pigeon nesting on my porch, and later the one-week-old results of her efforts. Here they are again, now no older than three weeks.

Mugwort Jon Smelly, and Bert Lane Rasputin.


And here they are again, a day later and with a different camera.


I also shot this of the parents, Penelope Van der Pigeon and Andrew Toodlewinks de la Xavier, who are now nesting on the other side of the porch.
Thank you all for the naming help.

Where do Baby Pigeons Come From? They Come From My Porch.

Previously, I posted about a pigeon nesting on my porch. She produced a couple eggs, but frankly I didn't follow up on it because they turned out to be duds. I'm sure that's the correct term an ornithologist would use–duds. But the pigeon mother and father rebuilt the nest and tried again, and yesterday I noticed mother was absent for the first time in weeks. So I stood up on the porch railing and saw this:

I know they look huge compared to that egg on the left (another dud?), but a little internet research tells me they're not much more than a week old. I probably shouldn't get attached, but I would like y'all's help in naming them. Thank you.

There's a Pigeon Nesting on my Porch.