Amaze Me
We like amazing things. We like to be amazed…astonishing things please us. The combination of being astonished and surprised is a pleasure most humans seek. Some of us even go to great expense to be amazed. We spend money and time seeking the amazing.
Good news…save your hard-earned money. Amazing is just outside your door! I can prove it.
Look at the photos. This week winter continued for us. We received at least 5 inches of snow. While I used the word winter two sentences ago, it’s not winter, it’s early spring. With early spring expect to find the mourning dove on the ground around your bird feeder, especially with snow on the ground.
Creation is filled with countless things to amaze the human heart. One of them is the mourning dove. Mourning doves are seed eaters, call it grain if you like. The doves pick up seeds/grain from the ground and store them in a feather and skin covered pouch called a crop. It is found below their neck and connected to the bird’s stomach. In a safe resting place, the dove will digest the seeds. Doves do not have teeth. Seed goes into the bird’s crop whole. Then is swallowed whole and enters the bird’s gizzard. The gizzard is a muscular bird organ which contains fine pieces of gravel. The gravel grinds the seed into digestible pieces. That’s amazing-gravel teeth-and not found in the bird’s mouth. Gravel is why many birds have fatal collisions with vehicles. Gravel is found at the edges of many roadways and draws birds needing to replenish their gizzard. Gizzard and crop…these are the first two absolutely amazing facets of the mourning dove.
Mourning Doves mate for life. Both male and female can feed their young from a rich milk like substance called “pigeon milk.” Male and female can secrete this substance from their crops. All the young dove, you might call it a squab, needs to do is place its beak in its parent’s mouth. Squab are fed this rich “milk” about four days and then they are gradually weaned to a seed diet. We could say mourning doves are good parents.
While they might be good parents, they are messy nest builders. The eggs are visible in some dove nests-that’s from the bottom. This may seem to be a problem but the population of mourning doves in North America is large somewhere between 300 and 400 million. And…the female only lays two eggs in clutch! However, in warmer parts of North America the mourning dove female may nest from two to five times a season.
Would you be amazed to know that Mourning Doves can fly up to 55 mph? The dove’s falcon wing shape gives them a sleek aerodynamic and fast flight.
Most amazing to me are the feathers of the mourning dove. You wonder aren’t feathers just…well feathers? True. But mourning dove feathers are a light tan with black spots. Right, this is not amazing. But light tan feathers that are iridescent are. The mourning dove may look drab from a distance, but make the effort to look closely. A good photo will reveal the iridescence, but get close to a wild bird and seeing the real thing is better. A mourning dove is a surprisingly beautiful bird-but to recognize this fact takes a closer look than we are usually willing to take time to do. It’s worth it…
Why are there so many amazing attributes about one small bird, the mourning dove? Simple. The mourning dove is a messenger. Its presence in your neighborhood is a signal of the amazing deeds of its Creator. Mourning doves remind us that this is God’s world. Give that some thought, see where it leads. Take time to study a mourning dove. Perhaps you will find amazing.