Thursday, August 26, 2010

Tea with Pigeons

 Cup of the Day #31
Colored ink on white cup
by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

 It's official - baby pigeons really are the ugliest things imaginable. If you every wondered what an avian dinosaur looked like, baby pigeons fit the bill.

On July 1st, two eggs appeared in a flower pot on my fire escape, right outside the kitchen window. I transferred them to a basket which I placed next to the flower pot - an arrangement acceptable to the mother - and a few weeks later they hatched out, almost unrecognizable as birds.

I haven't been home much this summer and it has been too hot to hang out in the kitchen, so I have only seen their progress intermittently. One pigeon died at the beginning of August, but the other hung in there squeaking a squawking to be fed every time the parents showed up. We have not fed it a crumb, lest is stay forever.

The weather has finally cooled off and I am home from traveling. I have been sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea again this week. Empire Coffee and Tea Co. have stopped selling Scottish Blend tea so we are drinking PG Tips until I can get it together to order my favorite blend online or track it down elsewhere in the city.

Meanwhile, the pigeon has left the nest and is exploring the flower pots and the windowsill where it sits, unafraid, watching me drink tea. It is not ready to fly yet - not all the feathers are in - but there is much wing stretching and flapping going on, and endless preening of feathers. Now pigeon friends show up. Not the parents but other characters I haven't seen before, checking out the adolescent bird. Guess she is a girl, but she just squawks for food endlessly and they fly away. She kind of reminds me of my teenage daughter, but don't let my daughter know I said that.

  Baby Pigeons, Mid July 2010

One left, hanging in there- Early August

Adolescent bird keeping me company, late August. 
Shouldn't she be leaving soon?

1 comment:

  1. Two days after I posted this the pigeon took wing and left. Feels a little lonely without the bird looking in the kitchen window!

    ReplyDelete