single parent nest

We spent a bunch of time staring at the nest in the vine yesterday and have concluded that there is, indeed, only one bird looking after the eggs. That means that no one is sitting on those eggs while this bird looks after itself, and they could get cold, which is bad.

Ok, we're total nerds and noticed as the sun rose this morning that no one was on the nest, and it's been getting down into the low 60s (about 16 C) at night. Eggs are supposed to incubate at around 99 F (37 C), so things aren't looking so good.

Here's what else I learned while looking that stuff up:

1. The stages of birdiness are: egg, squab, fledgling, adult.
2. It says here that eggs hatch after about 14 days, and it takes about another 14 before they fledge. In the wild, doves typically live 7 to 11 years. It also says that if you live in a state that allows hunting, they only live 1 to 1 1/2 years, and dove hunters are evil. (Ok, so I read that between the lines, but it wasn't hard.)
3. It says here that doves are yummy.
4. Dove clutches contain two eggs. If researchers move eggs around (pdf) to make some one-egg clutches and some three-egg clutches, the three-eggers end up scrawny. I suppose that if they'd learned that doves could handle three eggs, that would have been interesting and potentially useful for fostering (I guess), but since they just made a bunch of scrawny birds, in retrospect, it seems kind of mean. I know, I know - 20/20 hindsight, but if you're a physicist and try something that doesn't work, usually no one ends up scrawny.
5. A single parent can successfully raise two little birds (pdf) from eggs to fledglings, but it's not all that likely, and if they make it, they'll be scrawny.
6. No one knows what happens to scrawny fledglings because they're kind of hard to keep track of once they leave the nest.

So it's kind of hard not to get attached to somebody who lives on your patio, but since there's not a lot we can do to help, we'll just see what happens and let you know.