[mou] Eurasian Collared-Doves, Carver County

[Dennis/Barbara Martin]

Refound the Eurasian Collared-Doves in Hamburg (Carver County) this AM.
This is a second county record.  Had the chance to talk to a local whose
feeders these birds are coming to occasionally.  Mark Martinson (nice guy
but spells his name with three too many letters) first saw the birds in Jan
or Feb and thought they were pigeons.

Last summer his former neighbors had told him that a pair of pigeons were in
their back yard all winter long.  There are no Rock Pigeons in town  that I
could find because of a lack of a grain elevator and ready food sources.
These folks moved this past winter so the birds may have moved to this new
feeder at that time.  Thus these birds could have been here for a year and a
half or more.  Wonder how may other towns in Minnesota have this species
around and nobody has noticed them.

Mark lives across Jacob about a half block east of the post office.  His
neighbors house to the west (across the alley) is where the birds may have
been a year ago.  I saw the birds in the open lot next to the post office,
in both conifers that are on that lot, is a deciduous tree that is over the
house next to the open lot, in a deciduous tree that is over the neighbors
house, and at the Martinson feeder.  For the first hour and a half I was
there I only saw one bird moving around now and then.  Suddenly the second
bird showed up.  Makes me wonder if the second bird was on a nest up to that
time.

At a pond a half mile north of town there were pigeons and strangely, at
least to me, there were three Trumpeter Swans.  Maybe non-breeding birds?
Do first year bird nest right away?  These three seemed to be not a white as
adults usually are this time of year.

Dennis Martin
dbmartin@skypoint.com

-original message-
At noon today I observed 2 Eurasian Collared-Doves in downtown Hamburg,
southwestern Carver County.  The doves were seen flying from the Post
Office, and on the lawn across Louisa Street from the Post Office.

 Doug Kieser
Minneapolis