One morning early this summer I saw some students examining the tree. That evening, I stopped to take a look, and at eye-level was a mourning dove nest. A couple days later (May 21) I stopped back to take a picture of it.
After I took the picture, a guy passing by, perhaps a professor or instructor said something along the lines of “they aren’t too smart when they pick a spot for nests”. Well, while you can’t see the entire tree, it’s not very tall (only 20 to 30 feet) with no easy way for a hawk to get into the branches. And despite the nest being 6 feet off the ground, it’s also in a place where it would be difficult for a hawk to get in there. Being in the middle of campus, there’s also small chance of a house cat wandering over and bother the nest. No, I think that overall, this is a good place to nest.
After he walked away, I realized that it was just part of the arrogance of man to say that. Yes, mankind has selected all sorts of great places to build dwellings. Without creating a list, just think of all the places where people live or have lived despite any natural disasters that happen with a regular occurrence.
Yeah, animals got nothing on our ability to pick a place to live.
Mourning doves truly aren’t very smart, in fact they are rather stupid. It baffles me that hunters actually use guns to hunt them during dove season. I recall being able to throw stones or sticks at them during my childhood, and very often able to kill them, barely two or three steps away, at my second or even third attempt.
Your mourning doves are geniuses compared to mine:
http://shandrew.livejournal.com/50064.html