Opinion: Mrs. Dove has me beat as far as patience

I’ve been mostly restricted to quarters for the last three weeks and it’s starting to wear me down.

I shouldn’t complain, I’ve been able to go for groceries, pick up the mail at work and run payroll checks at the office. My wife and mother have all been almost totally locked down during that time. I’m also not going to complain because some out there haven’t been getting a paycheck.

About the time it became apparent we were going to be locked in until at least mid-April, my wife and I noticed another one of God’s creation on restriction on our back porch.

One day at the dining table my wife asked if “those birds had a nest out there.”

“Out where,” I asked?

“On the rafter under the patio.”

I glanced out and reminded her that those silly doves had made out like they were going to nest on that beam near the corner of the patio every year since we lived in the house and they had never carried through on it.

It was Eurasian Collared dove to be precise. The kind of dove you see in the street everywhere. When I grew up here they weren’t making their home in eastern New Mexico. In 2012 my late friend Tony Gennaro took note of the species arrival in the area in his column in the Portales News-Tribune.

“During their reproductive phase, they emit a rather harsh, nasal vocal sound in flight, something like ‘krreeew.’ At other times we hear a hooting, steadily repeated ‘coo COOO cup or a COO COO co,’” Gennaro wrote.

I’ve got to admit Gennaro nailed the sounds they make to a “T.” Soon however, the mating pair piped down, especially Mrs. Dove. I looked out on the patio and it looked like they had stuffed a tumbleweed up between the beam and the corrugated roofing of the patio.

Soon she was unmistakably setting a clutch of eggs atop that weed. While their nest engineering may be lacking, Mrs. Dove has made up for it with patience. She leaves only for brief moments, usually to visit the nearby feeder and birdbath, unless some inconsiderate human decides to mow the grass beneath the nursery.

I can’t say for sure when she laid the eggs but going by when she quit leaving it, we should just about have those eggs incubated by Easter morning.

That goofy bird nesting on my patio doesn’t have a care about a human pandemic or the worries of making a living. Instead, according to what I’ve read, she’ll quarantine herself on the nest several times each year.

I wish I had her patience. I may need my patio back soon, Mrs. Dove.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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