Some people like to start their day with a TV news show or something similar, but I start my day listening to the birds in my neighborhood.
I hear cardinals, robins, hawks, a woodpecker, a blue jay, and a pair of mourning doves. The blue jay was absent last year, so it's nice hear its call again this spring.
The mourning doves are my favorite and have been for many years. I enjoy their cooing and they always remind of summer mornings in my childhood, when I developed the habit of starting my day before dawn
My dad always departed for work before 7 a.m. I enjoyed spending time with him, so I'd wake up early and sit with him while he prepared for the day.
The mourning doves were always awake at that time, and I learned to recognize their calls.
Now the doves outside my window today are nesting on my balcony.
I recently read that doves are devoted parents and both the male and female take turns incubating their eggs. The male will sit in the nest during the morning hours, the female will spend the remainder of the day there.
If that's correct, then it is the male dove that sits on my balcony railing most afternoons and looks in through our front window. It's a treat to hear him cooing in the late afternoon hours.
After a challenging winter and a wet spring, I savor a day that starts with doves cooing and robins calling and ends with a screeching blue jay and singing cardinals.
