Mourning Dove in a Strawberry Planter: What To Do

by Jessica

What I Did Right Away

• I stopped moving or rotating the planter.
• I watched from a distance rather than touching the chick or nest.
• I watered slowly along the side farthest from the nest.
• I kept pets and unnecessary activity away from the area.
• I limited photographs to a few quick visits when the adult was away.

How I Found the Dove Chick

I almost missed the chick entirely.

It was a Tuesday morning, the kind when the light comes in sideways and everything feels a little gilded.

I was doing my usual rounds on the back porch, checking the tomatoes, pinching off basil, and giving the hanging planters a lazy spin so they would receive even sun.

I reached toward the strawberry basket, the one overflowing with runners and a few stubborn green berries that refused to ripen, when something stopped my hand.

A sound. A tiny, papery rustling.

I stood on my toes and peered over the rim. There, nestled between the strawberry leaves and the damp potting soil, was the smallest bird I had ever seen.

A Mourning Dove chick, newly hatched, maybe a day or two old. Its eyes were still closed, and pinkish skin showed beneath a sparse covering of pale down.

It sat hunched in a shallow nest among the plants, its oversized head bobbing slightly with each breath, as though it were too heavy for that fragile neck.

I did not breathe for several seconds.

I had noticed a pair of Mourning Doves perching on the porch railing during the previous weeks, but I had given them little thought. Doves were everywhere.

They cooed from the gutters and wandered across the driveway. I had no idea they had quietly chosen my strawberry planter as a nursery.

I stepped back carefully, the way you do when you have accidentally entered someone else’s private moment.

For the rest of the day, I found myself drifting toward the window.

An adult dove returned within the hour and settled among the leaves with such practiced calm that I felt, by comparison, like a complete wreck.

A few days later, I returned with my camera.

By then, the transformation was already underway, which explains why the chick looks much older in the photograph than it did when I first found it.

Its eyes were open, gray-brown pin feathers covered its wings and back, and some of the feather sheaths were beginning to open. Wisps of yellow down still clung to its head and body.

I began watering only along the opposite edge of the planter, pouring slowly enough that the nest remained dry. The strawberries would manage.

Some things matter more than a harvest.