Each morning I check on her. I wish I had recorded how many days it has been. Must be about a week now since I discovered her hidden away in the branches of the Elm outside my bedroom window, maybe more.
I discovered the deceased pigeon in the grass, before I discovered her. It made me wonder. Had there been a scuffle? Was it her partner? Was it a rival? I'll never know. Some kids buried the body. Which I appreciated, since the sight of dead birds fill me with sadness and unease as if they might be a bad omen of some sort.
A quick search tells me that pigeon eggs hatch after about 2,5 weeks. This is why I feel I should have counted the days. So I can make an estimate of when I'll be seeing the young ones.
She doesn't move much, but twice now I've seen her turn around and got a glimpse of two eggs. Another search tells me that that's usually the amount of eggs any pigeon lays at a time.
On stormy days I worry that she might get blown out of the tree, nest and all. The spot the parents have chosen feels rather precarious to me. So far it has stayed put. On exceptionally warm days I worry that she might die of thirst. But she hasn't. During the day I never catch her leaving her nest though. So she must go during the night, surely? More searching tells me that pigeons can't survive two days without water, so she must! She can, however survive without food for seven days.
I'm not sure I've seen the father anywhere. He might be the one buried in the ground. It is said that the parents take turns brooding, and while I don't consider myself a great birdspotter of any kind, I do feel that I can sufficiently discern one pigeon from another. It is the same pigeon I wake up to every single morning. So now I must assume some activity goes on while I'm fast asleep at night.
Some mornings the rose-ringed parakeets come to disturb the peace. While I find great joy in them, admittedly they are awfully loud and screechy. They're not too shy either. Sometimes they fly ever so close to my window, hovering as though they were hummingbirds, with me standing right in front of them, that I think if the glass weren't there, they might land on me.
I check on Evelyn, for that is her name, (aren't humans funny, always feeling so urged to name and claim things) to make sure she wasn't being bothered by the rowdy, green gang. She wasn't. She sat there quite unbothered by these sprightly screechers. Of course she doesn't need me to look out for her. Nature doesn't need humans at all. Nature finds its own way. But humans like to find themselves a bit more important than they actually are. Or they are simply silly dreamers like me who love to pretend they play their insignificant, but impactful part in the world.
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