Mrs. James Discourages a Mourning Dove

Mrs. James, an expert at critter discouragement, had been eyeing a bird on our porch for several days. It was, in fact, a Mourning Dove, but Mrs. James doesn't call birds by their names. This bird had been looking to build, and had put down a deposit (two twigs) on a nook behind one of the columns on our porch. Mrs. James was determined to discourage it. Last month, there had been another pair of birds that had nested in the same nook. I monitored their progress every day, from nest to eggs to hatchlings, until the thrilling morning when they all just upped and flew away. Mrs. James didn't see it that way. She said, "They trashed my porch." So, when the Mourning Dove started looking around, she swung into action.

First, she got some little ceramic frogs from the bonus room and, with a ladder, placed them at strategic spots along the inside porch ledge on either side of the nook. The next morning, when she looked out the window, the bird was sitting on the ledge, midway between two of the ceramic frogs, and staring at one of them. Later in the day, when she looked again, the bird was still there, still staring at the frog. Mrs. James concluded that the bird somehow knew that the frogs were not real, so she decided to confront the bird, directly, herself.

She went to the front door and made noise by locking and unlocking the latches. Then, carefully, she opened the door and peeked out. The bird was still there, but now it was staring at Mrs. James. She stared back. Eventually, she stepped out on the porch, in full view of the bird. The bird didn't budge.

That night, she told me what had happened. I advised patience - the bird is challenging the frog for the territory, I said. When it sees that the frog won't back down, it will leave. The next morning we looked out, and the bird was gone. I went to work, glad all day that I had earned Mrs. James' respect in the matter of understanding birds.

When I got home that evening, I checked the porch and the bird was still gone. Humming a tune, I poured a couple of glasses of wine and went looking for Mrs. James. She wasn't in the house anywhere. I finally found her out on the back patio, staring down a squirrel.