Nesting Season with Our Dove Family!

When we first moved into our forever home, we saw a pair of mourning doves trying to nest in next door’s porch. They failed. The sticks they piled on the ledge above the door kept blowing down, and, after a couple of days of trying, they gave up and moved on.

But this sparked my dream that one day doves would nest in my front porch. In all the countries we’ve lived, visiting doves (of different types) have always been a constant friendly presence, with their big eyes and soft cooing calls. These days, mourning doves regularly visit our garden: sunbathing and taking baths in summer; huddling together and fluffing up to stay warm in winter. Watching them raise babies would be a next-level privilege.

And I still can’t quite believe this, but my dream has come true, and it’s even better than I could have hoped for…

If you’d like to follow along in real-time as this year’s chicks hatch and grow, I’m sharing live updates and short video clips of my dove family in the PlanetJune Discord – more on that later. But first, let me take you back to how it all began…

Building the Nesting Platform

I did some research to find a dove nest box design that would work well (I chose this open platform design from 70birds), and asked Dave to build it. He recycled some of the wood from our old IKEA futon frame, which had finally fallen apart on the journey back from South Africa. (Don’t you just love the idea that our old bed has now become a dove bed?)

Dave also mounted a motion-activated security camera facing the platform so we could monitor anything interesting that happened.

The first year we put up the platform, nothing happened – with hindsight, that was my fault. I’d asked Dave to mount the box where I could see into it, which meant it wasn’t high enough for the doves to feel secure. Last year, we moved it much higher on the wall, and what a difference – a pair of doves moved in as soon as nesting season began!

Nest Building

For a few days, the male brought twigs, and the female arranged them. This was incredibly frustrating to watch – she placed the twigs haphazardly and didn’t anchor them at all against the wind, so every day we found a new scattering of sticks strewn on the porch beneath the nest.

But the pair persisted, and, with more determination than skill, they eventually had enough twigs to form a nest of sorts, and the female settled in…

Raising Babies

I’m so impressed with the dedication and care of the parents! Both birds took shifts all day to protect the eggs, and then the chicks, and mama dove kept them warm every night. It was hard to even get a glimpse of the eggs or chicks, as the parents rarely left them unguarded for more than a few seconds!

Here are a few key candid moments captured on the security camera:

1st egg laid… 2nd egg laid…
As soon as a chick hatched, the parents removed the shells to a safe distance (so they wouldn’t alert predators to the nest location)

The nest box was an unqualified success. Starlings, house finches and a robin took an interest, but the doves refused to give up their prime real estate! Within 2 days of the babies fledging, the parents would return to start their next clutch of eggs.

Doves always lay just two eggs, and with the exception of one infertile egg in the first brood, all our eggs hatched and were raised successfully.

Baby Dove Photo Gallery

Although the nest location and protective parents didn’t make photography easy, I did manage, with the aid of a stepladder, to get enough photos to show you the whole egg-to-fledge story (click any of the pics to see the full-size images):

The dove nest has been an absolute delight: saying hello to the doves every time we left the house; trying to catch a glimpse of a little head with pretty blue-lined eyes peeking over the edge of the platform; being serenaded by soft coos from the porch while we sat in our living room; and watching nine chicks grow and fledge over the summer!

Dove Nest Statistics

I studied all my camera footage to quantify the 2024 season:

Nest started	March 31st
First egg laid	April 2nd
Last chick fledged	September 10th
Egg hatch time	14 days*
Chick fledge time	14 days*
Time between broods	2 days*
Number of broods	5
Total eggs laid	10
Fledged chicks	9

* Average times across the whole season

Congratulations to our superstar dove parents!

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Dove Watch 2025

Now it’s nesting season again, and our doves (I romantically assume it’s the same pair) have already laid claim to the platform again. Hearing their warm calls once more and seeing them build their nest and settle into their egg brooding routine has reminded me of the joy I found in watching our dove family growing over the course of last year – I hope I’ve shared a glimpse of that with you in this story.

But this year will be even better! Last year’s video footage was good enough for me to monitor the doves and get some stats, but the clips were grainy and indistinct. We’ve just installed a new high quality camera with optical zoom, plus a server to store the footage.

As you can see, the new camera gives a perfect view into the nest, so I can monitor the progress without disturbing the birds, and save high quality video clips of every stage. I can already tell the male and female apart by their subtle differences in colouring – something I couldn’t see at all last year – so I can get a much better understanding of their lives and routines.

Once the season ends, I’ll have thousands of video clips that I can pull from to produce my own little wildlife documentary!

Follow Along in Real-Time!

The first eggs in the above image should hatch any day now, and I’ll be sharing progress reports and short video clips in the PlanetJune Discord. If you’d like to follow my dove family’s story as it unfolds over the year, please join us there, and you’ll get the first look at this year’s chicks!

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Nature is amazing, and I feel so privileged to share in the life of my pair of beautiful mourning doves as they patiently and devotedly raise their chicks. I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the life of our dove family, and that you’ll join me to follow their magical journey this year.