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Cote Life

Quiet, gentle doves that just coo, look pretty, and do very little else? Don't you believe it. A cote full of birds has as much drama going on as the best dramatic production. At first sight the image of serenity is maintained, but just take the time to sit and stare and you will slowly have your own private melodrama played out before you. The characters will unfold, each dove revealing its individual traits, with the same weaknesses and strengths as you would see in any gathering. I defy you not to give them names that readily describe to the unenlightened 'dove watcher' the personalities of your birds. There's the lovey dovey pair that won't be swayed from their mutual devotions and do it by the book. They court, mate, produce a pair of eggs, she sits on the eggs until mid-morning, then hubby takes his turn while the wife has a stretch, gets some feed and returns unfailingly to relieve hubby mid-afternoon. He then collects more nesting material and makes up the nest around her. The chicks dutifully hatch after 18-19 days. They look ridiculous with an oversized beak, bulgy shut eyes and naked except for a crop of wispy yellow hair. Only the mother dove would love them. The nest sitting goes on for another ten days, during which time both parents feed the young a substance known as Pigeon's Milk, which is an easily digested 'custard' that both parents produce in their crops. After about ten to fourteen days the young are at what is known as the squeaker stage, because of the noise they make in their constant demand for food. The whole grain content of the custard has been slowly increased to a point where, at about three to four weeks, the young are eating solids and are able to feed themselves. The parents are now ready to start again, often producing the next clutch of eggs before the first brood has flown. This can lead to conflict as the parents need space, so the young must literally fly the nest.

Then there's the woman's libber that flies off during her turn on the nest and lets hubby get on with it! Jack the Lad males have a full-time wife but still chat up anything in feathers and have as many lady friends as they can get away with. There is always a surplus of unattached males who stand at the periphery of the cote and suddenly spring to life at the slightest hint of female attention, strutting around, cooing and bowing for all they are worth. Chests inflated and fans at full display as they attempt to gain favour, only to be foiled by a more mature male who will not allow his lady to be pestered and has the domination to strike home his point. But the young bucks will have their day, time is on their side. There is the workaholic bird that spends hours collecting nesting material, often gathering lengths of grass and twigs that are so long he can barely fly. If he does get airborne, he is aerodynamically unsound and has to use all his aerobatic skills to get home, only to discover the sofa he has just proudly retrieved for the little home will not fit through the door.

A fast maturing and uncommitted female is never given a moments peace. As soon as she lands, young males gather to do their bit, each showing his worth. The young hen , not impressed walks on, followed tirelessly by her entourage of admirers. Finally, for reasons to which we will never be privy, she allows one to become her mate.

Moving home sets another scene of turmoil. The more senior the pair, the more prestigious is the position of their place on the cote. Top birds, it would appear, have top bay, sunny side and so it goes on down the pecking order. The poorest little pair have the bottom bay around the back, setting the scenario for conflict. The underlings are always trying to improve their lot, except the lovey dovey pair of which we first spoke, they know their place just kissing and having babies. The high flyers, (that's a joke), want to go up a floor or at least to go round the sunny side, so hubby goes out to do battle to improve the family status. As the two gladiatorial males go at each other, beak and wing, the rest of the congregation carries on with barely a sideways look.

Their lives, like ours, are full of love, strife and heartache. Nature will take one of a pair, and the bird that is left will frantically look for its loved one and even go into a mourning period, which will vary from bird to bird. After a time they repair in both senses of the word and start anew. Suddenly, with a signal unheard, the birds not sitting on eggs or warming their young take to the air just, it appears, for the sheer ecstasy of flying; swooping, diving and swirling in great circles, all in a random yet strangely formal formation that appears to be rehearsed, but at the same time demonstrating a spontaneous tribute to the exhilaration of flying. All this happens never so far from the cote as to get lost. Your part in this plot can be as involved or as detached as you wish. The birds, given time, will come to know and trust you, but involved or not, take this as a fact-you won't ignore it. The birds are free to enact life as their wild instincts dictate, and it will be your privilege to have a cote side seat.


The Pairing and the Homing

Ignorance is bliss, I can liken the unravelling of dove habits as to trying to understand a poem in Greek, given that you do not speak the language. There are no books for reference, the teachers are suspect, and the only thing you're sure of is it must rhyme and the Greeks understand it. So we began by going to the library. Nothing there on doves and garden cotes. We found books on the history of cotes, old stone ones. The keeping of doves as a constantly replenishing larder - they used to eat old birds past their prime - the squabs, which are young birds, were eaten at about four weeks old before they started to fly which would make the meat tough, and, of course, the eggs. We found books on the breeding of various and, in my opinion, hideous looking exhibition birds that, in some cases, had such short beaks they could not even feed their young. Still nothing on the white garden fantail or ornamental dove housing for the garden. If there was any mention it was the last two lines of the chapter on loft keeping and given short thrift. The next step was to learn the secrets by trial and error. The number of people that know how to home and sex doves is amazing. They have not actually done it themselves or, if they have, just the once. We hear it all the time, about the lady down the sweetshop who did it this way, or before the war my grandad used to keep pigeons and he would reckon on doing it like this. We acknowledge there is more than one way to skin a cat. The problems begin when you start to mix and match ideas.

The secret is in the pairing. A successful homing will only happen with a compatible pair of birds. Now begins the problem, doves do not have 'rattley bits' as Victoria Wood would say. Physical inspection reveals nothing. At this stage we go back to 'the friend', who knows unfailingly how to sex doves. We have heard it all. 'Females have flat heads', 'you can tell by the beak', 'they must be a pair, they were hatched together', 'the male has darker neck feathers', and apparently, doves that pair, after St Valentines day are not a true pair, (I have never yet seen a dove consult a calendar!). Mature males admittedly are easy to see, they strut around bowing and cooing they might as well carry a sign declaring I'm male and proud of it. The difficulty lies with the similarity between females and adolescent males. Now you may think that a big tough male would show you the females by courting and subsequent mating. No, some males would mate anything that will stand still long enough and if it won't stand still, make it and then mate it. The adolescent males especially those from less dominant stock, will submit to a bigger male rather than get a hiding. Another twist in the tail is that strong males will try to secure more than one female. We had a male dove christened 'Bonkability' who happily kept three ladies on the go. So which was the true pair? The long and the short of it is there are no short cuts when it comes to the pairing, sexing and homing of doves.




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