Socializing in the backyard

Mourning doves cooling off on a birdbath

A few days ago I observed these two mourning doves through the kitchen window. Their home base is a huge tree next door where there was a lot of nest building activity a couple of months ago. These are either two parents or a parent and fledgling.

The mourning doves like to perch on the edge of this birdbath for as long as 10 minutes at a time, sometimes with their tail feathers in the water.

House finches at the other birdbath

The house finches tend to fly into the back garden in groups. They first land on branches of the cape honeysuckle, then take turns at the birdbath. In the photo there are two female finches and one male. The male has very bright orange plumage on its head and chest.

Note the second female up toward the top left, well camouflaged on the cape honeysuckle branch. The white flowers behind the birdbath are from the flowering potato vine solanum laxum.