birdpix

Call me a sentimental old fool ,call me me  a big girls blouse call me what you will ,but I was saddened by the death of two collared doves in our garden.We have been down this road many times ,sparrowhawks have demolised them ,this I can accept as a part of nature ,I can rationalise this ,it needs to happen .Sparrowhawks are great to see anywhere and their killing prey dosent even scratch the surface of for example collared dove populations ,nature has of course allowed for this.Ok you may argue that collared doves are an alien species have only colonised the British Isles very recently (1955) It would be fair to say that they are doing extrremely well and are welcome in our garden ,anyway I digress.Cats killing them annoys me ,many instances of this in our garden.What I felt guilty about was that these two ,on consequetive days had flown into a window ,the penny dropped when I noticed the collared dove shaped splodges on the  windows upstairs.At the time I wondered ,dove number one was festering under the bird table ,I walked up to him and he made no attemot to fly off,I picked him up gently ,it was obvious that something was seriously wrong -see the picture ,its not digiscoped. I put the poor fellow in a box and placed him in the garage where its quiet and dark. He looked into my eyes and he was asking me help me , Im not going to make it .When we returned home a few hours later that evening he had sadly died.The following day we found another -no teeth marks from a cat ,very dead only later I figured out how they had both died.Doent matter how many times this happens ,I still feel saddened.