Update

Right now I am sitting on a hammock in a cage with my dove on my knee (Anna might get mad at me for saying that Tinks is mine but really no one other then me feeds her, changes her water and spends any time with her. Hopefully she won't see this post). I am listening to Buffalo Springfield’s “Go and Say Goodbye”. It's been ten minutes since I started this post but that's not because of my slow writing but because Tinker suddenly decided that she needed more attention and started to nibble my leg trying to get extra love, when I looked up at her she started flicking her wings (dove version of flirting) and crouched down. She did look very cute so I gave in. Since Tinker doesn't really enjoy being petted or stroked but LOVES it when I take my hands and try to cover as much of her as possible with my fingers, pushing her head against her chest so she feels completely trapped.

I think she often falls asleep while being held.

Before we put her outside for the summer she hated being trapped but now it is her absolute favorite thing. Mama had the idea that we all agree that is probably right about it; that Tinker had brain damage or something that is messing her up because no bird should fly as badly as her! I even think that she is scared of flying. It's now much later in the day and I have long ago left Tinker. I spent an hour and twenty minutes with her but only managed to write this much due to the fact that my hands were needed for important dove holding. There are four thing that I want to write about but I'll do them all quickly and won't go into a lot of detail since I don't really want to.

Number One: Nemi and Friends. We made our outdoor cage thinking to block Tinker from getting out and from anything that might harm her from getting in. The house sparrows and squirrels soon saw free food for available to anyone able to get through the cracks in the cage. I found it very annoying when they stole her food but every time I closed up a newly squirrel-chewed hole then they would nibble another one somewhere else so I was basically fighting a loosing battle. The squirrels could always find their way out in a flash but the sparrows often forgot how to get out and would fly in circles for hours looking for a hole to squeeze through. Though most could get out some needed to be caught then released. Admittedly it was fun chasing them around the cage. I did feel bad for scaring them so much but I reasoned that if they were scared enough then they wouldn't come back (it didn't work). They might have stayed stuck and eating Tinkers food and drinking her water for who knows how long if I didn't take action. It usually took me maybe half an hour to get them and most of that time was spent not letting them rest until they tired enough to make a mistake and get caught, but when they were caught they would go completely docile - not struggling or anything. Nemi is a sparrow that I've caught many times in my cage and who, by now, is terrified by the sight of me. I named only her out of all the birds that broke in because she is so easily recognized: she has a deformed foot that is blackened and she can't move it and she used to not have any tail feathers (though the last time I saw she had the small beginnings on one). I named her Nemi because she is my nemesis. Neither her tail nor her foot impedes her flight in the slightest. 

This it not Nemi, unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of her. This is how relaxed they are once they get caught.

Number Two: Bradley. Bradley is the neighbor's puppy who we all feel bad for because we haven't yet seen them play with him even though they got him early in this summer, I'm not counting the time where John saw them throw a ball for him then tell him to bring it back and give it to them, the problem was that Bradley didn't know the commands so he just watched them with the ball in his mouth. He also gets crated every night and some of the day, sometime we hear him crying and begging to be let out, the poor thing. Since he doesn't have anyone to play with him like a puppy needs to do we have figured out how to play with him. There are a couple of holes in our fence where the wood has fallen away and we stick our arms through for him to bite and play with. He loves it and we also enjoy playing with him. The only draw back is that Theo does not really like puppies and though he tries to tolerate Bradley he often can't and uses viscous sounding growls and bared teach to put him in his place. Theo doesn't hurt the puppies in anyway it's just the way that dogs and wolves tell their children off. Nobody likes seeing their dog at the receiving end of a reprimand. I really just wanted to write about him so I could put these photos up.

Number Three: Bonaparte's. One day we were walking on the old Rocky Point Amusement Park beach and found a Bonaparte's Gull who we think had a broken wing. It was sitting on a rock in the shallows and it didn't even try to fly away when we carefully corralled it in Ben's T-shirt. We took it home put it in a cage and couldn't get it to eat a single sardine. It died that night from who knows what. We would have given it to a animal rehabilitation center but as it often happens this poor bird was found it on a weekend when the rescue is closed. It is buried in the back corner of the yard near a young squirrel who fell out of a hole in our roof.

We thought it would live through the night. We were planing on naming it Bonny Prince Charley.

Number Four: Pip. The other day one of our neighbors whom we had never met before came over and stood at the gate (some people for some reason don't know how to open our homemade gate latch works). She had a baby goldfinch sitting in an empty paper coffee cup. She had found the baby on the sidewalk a few streets away and she originally had put it in a large nearby flower pot which was the right thing to do since the father bird was watching it from up in a tree. Later, when she came back in the other direction it was still there - unattended - so she decided to pick it up and rescue it. She told us that because she had 2 cats at home that she couldn't take it home herself. Now why she chose to come to us out of all the other people who live here on our street was is not really sensible. She said it was because we have lots of sunflowers and goldfinches eat sunflowers (but not baby goldfinches). To us it kind of seemed more like fate. What are the chances that Gypsy, Tinker and this new baby found themselves at our door? Anyway, we took it from her - what else would we do? To me it looked like it was a fledgling who are supposed to leave the nest at two weeks old and then wander around learning how to fly and find food while their parents watch them and feed them grubs. I remember saying that it looked to be fine and that we should put it back, but Mama was talking to the woman when I suggested this and wasn't listening to me so she answered me "no" without thinking about it. Mary, the woman who brought the little finch left and I searched to see if I was right and found that I was. We then realized that we only knew the street the bird was from not the exact spot where it's parents would be looking for it and we didn't know which house was Mary's either so we had no way of returning it to its parents who still needed to feed it.

After hours of trying to feed it mushy dog food I had the idea of feeding it a boiled egg because both Tinker and Gypsy love(d) them. The baby bird ate it up eagerly. The next morning I woke to its chirp (by then it had been named Pip and been randomly assigned the gender of female). I boiled another egg, giving half to Theo and eating a quarter of it myself. Then I hand-fed the rest to little Pippy. The day we found her she could fly but only a few feet so we didn't feel that there was any risk of her flying away. She just liked to sit on or near us and peep. Unfortunately we were very wrong in our thinking. The very next day, when we were spending a few hours with Baba in Worcester on the way to Petersham. We let her out of the temporary cardboard traveling box so that we could feed her and she could get some fresh air and sunlight. After eating all she wanted she just flew away up into a massive tree that was high enough that we had no real chance of getting her back. Ben took a long stick and tried to gently knock her down. He sort of succeeded but then she just flew away to some other tree and we lost her.
She was able to suddenly fly. She flew better then Tinker does but like Tink she doesn't have the slightest ability to find her own food. This was a few days ago so by now she surely dead. Poor little Pippy!

Keep the sound up on all of these because she make a really cute peep.

Link to a video of Pip eating egg yolk.
Another link to the same thing but from a different angle.
Her preening on my hand.

I was bored while out in Tink's cage so I entertained myself by opening Photobooth and taking strange pictures of her.

It very hard to make a dove look evil.

See the heart her wings make?