Over the past week or so, there have been three times I’m come out of my stairwell and seen a broken egg on the last step. I finally realized, much to my dismay, they must be coming from a nest built by the pigeon family that lives in my apartment building.
A few weeks ago, several pigeons took up residence in the eaves right outside of one of my living room windows. They have provided endless hours of entertainment for my cat and I like the sound of their cooing. I can pretend they’re doves. They’ve completely covered the landing that runs between my and my neighbor’s apartment-- it looks worse than any windshield I’ve ever seen, if you know what I’m saying--but we can just hose it down.
For an urban area, our little complex seems to get an awful lot of wildlife, whether it’s raccoons or possums or huge spiders or snails, there always seems to be something out there. We have a fountain with a pond with goldfish and those goldfish seem to learn early on that it’s a Darwinian pool-- figure out how to get behind a rock or a raccoon is going to have you for dinner. The current crop has been here for quite a while.
But the pigeons are new. After the second broken egg, I tried to find the nest on the landing and looked around the eaves where I’ve seen the pigeons sleeping at night, but I can’t find it. It must be on the roof, which I have no access to. I really wanted to find the nest to move it somewhere safe, even though I know it’s best that I don’t touch it even if I could find it. Still, it’s made me sad to know that my particularly pigeon roommates did not possess the necessary skills to build or place a nest where the eggs won’t fall out and that a heavily slanted roof may not be the smartest or safest spot.
It’s too late for my little potential pigeon babies, but apparently, the birds at the World Bird Sanctuary fare much better. Based in St. Louis, the World Bird Sanctuary occupies 304 acres and is open to the public. They take care of anything with wings and even have reptile displays. I feel like Tracy Morgan’s dimwitted “Saturday Night Live” character, Brian Fellow, who hosted "Safari Planet," but what on earth are reptiles doing at a bird farm? Anyway, the World Bird Sanctuary protects threatened bird species through “education, propagation, field studies and rehabilitation,” according to its website. They have released more than 8,000 injured birds back into the wild. For as great work as they do, I don’t think they can put my little injured bird eggs back together again...
March 21: World Bird Sanctuary
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