"Impressive" bird!

The window over the driveway gets hit by birds at least once every year. Sometimes these are fatal crashes (as I posted about earlier this year), but usually the birds are unharmed and fly away. These crash survivors are almost always mourning doves.

They always leave such amazing impressions on the window!

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The bird feeder is nearby, and this area sees a lot of mourning dove traffic. I think they're usually trying to land, so are flying relatively slowly when they hit the window.

I do not think mourning doves are the most intelligent birds around, but they certainly are greasy, or powdery. Whether it's oil or dust, it leaves such clear imprints.


You can make out so much detail in the feathers:

You can even see its feet!

Here's the leading edge of the wing:

I purposely leave these windows pretty dirty -- they haven't been cleaned since spring, or maybe even last year -- if they're too clean, we'd get even more birds flying into this window.

It may be distressing to hear a bird fly into the window, but seeing imprints like these left on the glass just makes me laugh now -- I know the bird hasn't hurt itself, at least not too badly.

 I've never mentioned it, but I do a pretty good mourning dove call. I just need to figure out how to say "look out for the windows!" in doveish now. It will really help me cut down on the amount of bird grease removal I need to do around here.