Pigeons' birth to flight

9^th Dec 2012

After we came back from a long holiday, I was surprised to see a love nest of Pigeon in our balcony. They get puffed up and move in short circles to display love for each other. During our absence they had their peace of time and the result was two eggs (second egg was a day younger) in one of my flower pot. They build relatively flimsy nests from sticks and other debris and used mud from the pot as a base. I saw both the parents caring for the young, which may leave the nest after seven to 28 days. Night time the Mother Pigeon use to hatch and lay them while the male use to do during the day time.

Mother Pigeon is more aggressive and attacks us when we go close. However during her attack she gets filled with air with puffs chest and feathers at the nape of the neck to appear larger and cute.
 

27^th Dec2012

After some 17 days the first egg was hatched and later in the day the second egg also hatched and two yellow babies came out.


These birdies are known as Squabs. They have wing like limbs and eyes closed. We provided them with water and millet (Bajra).

Later after 4 days of nestling I noticed a peculiar behavior; the young ones will put their beak and hang inside the nostril of their parent bird. Later I checked this behavior on the internet and came to know that Pigeon is a rare bird (Flamingo and penguins are other two birds producing milk) which produces milk and those young ones were sucking through the lining of crop.

A crop (sometimes also called a croup or a craw, or ingluvies) is a thin-walled expanded portion of the alimentary tract used for the storage of food prior to digestion. This anatomical structure is found in a wide variety of animals and birds and is like a pouch.

Both sexes of doves and pigeons produce "crop milk" to feed to their young, secreted by a sloughing of fluid-filled cells from the lining of the crop. Pigeon's milk begins to be produced a couple of days before the eggs are due to hatch. Crop milk bears little resemblance to mammalian milk, being a semi-solid substance somewhat like pale yellow cottage cheese. It is extremely high in protein and fat and contains more of it than cow or human milk. The parents may cease to eat at this point in order to be able to provide the squabs (baby pigeons and doves) with milk uncontaminated by seeds, which the very young squabs would be unable to digest. The baby squabs are fed on pure crop milk for the first week or so of life. After this the parents begin to introduce a proportion of adult food, softened by spending time in the moist conditions of the adult crop, into the mix fed to the squabs, until by the end of the second week they are being fed entirely on softened adult food.

8^th Jan 2013

In just one week the baby pigeons start to change color. The underlying skin changes from pinky to grey and dark black.

Their eyes were open now and a small humming chirping kind sound (Cooing) started coming from the nest. During the first week  the mother used  to sit on squabs to keep it warm and protect it.

11^th Jan 2013

Their color is completely changed to grey and they look like pigeons J The white lower back of the pure Rock Dove (Feral Pigeon) is its best identification character, the two black bars on its pale grey wings are also distinctive. Still they had brown spikes like feathers on their neck and head.

With the time they became more noisy in the night and dull during day time.

The mother has completely abandoned the babies and only father used to turn up to teach how to eat and other birdie things.

22^nd Jan 2013

The squab is now about 3 weeks old and is approaching the age when it should learn to fly. The flapping of wings and falling from the pot was very often and I used to lift them back to the nest. They started attacking me with their wings and beak.

29th Jan 2013
They both started short trips today
30th Jan2013
The babies are gone. We can clean the balcony now..

Next time I ll make sure we cook an omelet.