Co-coo

When we first moved here, Cat took an immediate liking to our nearest neighbours. They were “real people” she said, by which she meant they were not trying very hard to pretend they were important and they did not care about boring stuff like ideology. They’ve worked the land for many decades and are going to die working the land. Farmers to the bone. Non-nonsense people. Also, they keep barbary doves. Also, Grandpa Neighbour promised he’d give Cat a pair as a gift. We just had to make a cage.

It took us, meaning Cris, close to a year because he could only work on the cage when there were no more urgent things to do, but the Dove Palace was finished two weeks ago. So we got the pair.

It might not look like a palace to you but the cage we got them from was a quarter of this, with six birds living in it. Which is why our doves were not in the best of shapes when they came to us. A week in, and they’re growing new feathers and there’s no one to peck them out. They’re eating out of Cat’s hand because they’re so adorably tame. They’re also both boys.

With some birds, it’s really easy to tell the male from the female. Males are flamboyant and loud, and “Look at me!”, and females are more modest in colour and behaviour. This is not the case with doves. With doves, specifically barbary doves, the only reliable way to tell male from female is by song. Males sing. Females cackle like evil witches. Both of ours sing. They also have enemies.

Originally, the Bird Palace was supposed to be all open-air affair, with partial walling — and a roof — to be added ahead of winter. Then, on day one, Irina went down to check on the birds in the early morning to find a cat on the chicken wire. The cat was Vlad, basking innocently in the sun.

The problem was that he didn’t just bask. He also circled the cage in a very threatening way and, worst of all, took to running across the roof, tracking the movements of the birds below, as they freaked out from the sight of a predator over their heads. Hence the emergency installation of the shade net. Did it work? No. Vlad just runs over the net. But the birds seem calmer, probably because they can’t see him that clearly through it.

Vlad, however, is the least of the birds’ problems with predators. There are also weasels around. Or stoats. Or ferrets. Or all three. Which is why the chicken wire goes into the ground deep enough to prevent the predators from digging a tunnel under it and killing Atlas and Quartz. Unless they can gnaw through steel, which Irina, the paranoiac-in-chief of the family, wouldn’t put past them. Which is why Cris will be reinforcing the cage with another layer of wire. Work in the country never ends.

In the meantime, Cat considered returning one of the boys to exchange it for a girl. After a family discussion we decided we were not going to do that. We had, after all, rescued Atlas and Quartz from rather sub-optimal living conditions and we didn’t want to return either of them to these conditions. They get along well and are happy where they are. We might add a couple of females at some point in the future, though. Their cackling is precious and the boys deserve love.