Tinker has fallen in love (with me)

Unfortunately for Tink even though she is unaware of it she is in love with the wrong species and also the wrong gender. But she is, like I said, unaware that the face that she spent an hour preening and cooing at is NOT a dove. Or maybe she does know and she just doesn't care that she is not flirting with another dove. It is really hard to tell with Tinker.

This is how her tiny dove mind got so terribly confused. Recently we finished her cage and moved her out of the house so we could stop the almost constant mental tormenting she inflicted on our dog. We moved her into the great, dangerous and wild outdoors. But since we live in a city and she is thoroughly caged and our garden is (thanks to Mama) beautiful and tame she will not live a  dangerous and wild life out there but I don't think that any excitement other then flying into walls and nesting would suit her.

Anyway once she was out there she learned by listening to the other birds songs that the spring idea was to build a nest and immediately she wanted to make one of her own so she wasn't left out on what she thought was the best and only game existing and all the other birds took as a serious project.

So when I went to feed her from my hand that first morning Tinker, seeing a ideal nest, hopped in and spent a long time cooing at me and flicking her wings to show that she was nesting and it was my job to supply her with all she needed. We made her a nest of pine needles in my hand and took turns holding her and watching her insist that she needed more needles then pushed them out of our hands. She did that until she got bored and left her self heating nest to perch on her branches but if we showed it to her again she would hop back in and if we tried to put in her in a basket nest she would soon leave since that nest didn't walk around with her or coo to her or even heat itself.

Anna had a soccer tournament so we had to leave her with the boys and Dada for two days. I wasn't really worried about her but I knew that she had an egg coming that she would soon lay and birds can get egg bound. When we came back Tink had laid an egg but having her nest leave and go to Cape Cod to hold a dog leash (and not watch a single soccer game) she didn't have anything to sit upon when she laid it. I don't think it even crossed her mind to sit on the ground. So we came back to a broken egg which was probably laid from 5 feet above the ground.

Two days later, as in the way of doves, she laid another but maybe this one was stronger or maybe she had sat on the ground because it didn't break and she wasn't sitting in any hand while she made it. This egg we put in the fridge with the chicken eggs and are planing to drain it and feed half of it to Theo, some to Tink since its not bad for her and maybe we will try some ourselves.

I put it in my hands and she sat on it but I think it was because she wanted to sit in her finger nest and not because she was feeling at all motherly.

While I type I am listening to Emmylou Harris and I LOVE IT! 

So I took her egg away from her and she acted as if she was happy that the annoying thing that came out of her vent was finally gone from her nest and she continued to coo at me.

I left her for a while then since we were leaving the house to go for a dog walk and when I came back for a change I didn't pick her up since she was near her bird bath on the ground and I was hoping that she would take a bath but she didn't. Instead she flew over to the branch next to the hammock where I was sitting, reading and listening to Emmylou, and she paced back and forth there for a while. Seeing that I wasn't paying any attention to her she landed on my arm and found that I did look at her when she landed on me. Tinker walked up my arm and nestled on my shoulder. We exchanged coos for a while and she flicked her wings even faster when I put my hand up to touch her.

When I untangled my hair with my fingers Tink thought I was offering her a perfect place to nest so she jumped in and nested in my hair (Saint Kevin of Glendalough comes to mind) then she saw how unpreened my face was and set to work fixing that that.

Queen of the Silver Dollar! My favorite song!

Though I despise selfies (and only take them on the command of a superior) I didn't want to miss this picture and leave her hairy nest undocumented.

She spent a while trying to take the freckles off of my face. In the end she gave up and left my eye lids and eye brows and nose and mouth and ear and freckles and fingers a lot neater then when I entered her cage.

Video of Tink preening my disorderly ear. (Again sorry about my bad cooing but it fools her and that's all I'm doing it for)
And a video of her really enjoying a chin scratch.