Found nest. Newbie. Pls help!

[peedub]

Hi All. I've been browsing your forum and gained some info from others in similar situations to mine, however mine is slightly different. Any and all responses would be greatly appreciated.
I manage an apartment building here in NYC and a window was left open in a vacant unit. The former tenant didn't return keys for several weeks and a pigeon (I've only seen one adult) took this as an opportunity to enter and build a nest ON TOP OF THE STOVE in the kitchen. The eggs have hatched and both young ones appear healthy (one's actually quite feisty, leaping up and clicking when approached!).
Obviously, in this business there are time constraints. I am under much pressure to move the nest but both myself and my boss are concerned for the safety of the chicks (sic?). If I move them to the roof (one floor up) will they be abandoned and starve? Will I frighten them to death? We're pretty lost here. :confused:
Thanks to everyone for your time.
Patrick

[re lee]

If you move the nest. The parent birds will probably Not take any more care of them. You will either have to hand feed or perhaps find someone who can. As it takes about 28 to 30 days befor young birds wean and eat on there own. You could try going after dark into the apt, And catch the parent birds by closeing the window. And put them in some kind of cage. They very well may still feed out the young birds then. And then you can release them all later.

[cyro51]

Hi Patrick,

Basically yes, if you move the nest the parents won't recognise their young and won't feed them.

Can you judge how old they are? This link shows the day to day development and should help:

http://www.speedpigeon.com/baby_racing_pigeon.htm

I am going to post a link to this thread on one of the NY yahoo groups, maybe the NY pigeon lovers can help.

Cynthia

[peedub]

Wow! Thank you for the rapid replies. Thanks Cynthia for that link. Judging from those photos they appear to be about 12 days old.

[FlyByNight]

If that's about accurate, they probably won't be able to fly for another 3 weeks or so. Then they usually stay close to the nest for another few days.

One option would be to take them and give them to a rehabber to hand raise them, but it is by far better for them to continue to be raised by the parent(s). If a human raises baby birds they lack the education their parents would have given them about how and where and when to find food and what is safe or dangerous. They will be very much more able to survive on their own if the parents can continue bringing them up.

You didn't say what your time frame is on this but I'm assuming you want to show to prospective tenants and rent at the end of the month. Your the owner really should have to live with the consequences of having let the apartment go uninspected for these few weeks (3 weeks building the nest and sitting on the eggs before they hatch plus nearly 2 weeks since hatching). Given the demand for apartments in NYC I'd think you could get a new tenant regardless of the fact that the previous tenant is a family of pigeons who have not yet moved out. In other words, could you just treat these birds like a previous occupant who has not yet quite moved out? Many New Yorkers will completely understand and still want the apartment.

Theoretically, the previous human tenants, because they left the window open, should be responsible for any financial consequences.

How odd that they are nesting on the stove though. They don't know how frightening close to the image of "eggs for breakfast" they are. You should absolutely take some photographs if you can. I'd love to see them.

Wishing you luck with this amazing situation!

- Laurie

Wow! Thank you for the rapid replies. Thanks Cynthia for that link. Judging from those photos they appear to be about 12 days old.

[FlyByNight]

If I move them to the roof (one floor up) will they be abandoned and starve? Will I frighten them to death?

You probably won't frighten them to death but you'd give them a considerable scare. Pigeon parents are used to finding and continuing to care for their young outside the nest because youngsters sometimes do fall out of the nest and of course can't get back up to it. Usually they are a bit older when that happens, near the start of flight (3 or 4 weeks) when they're stretching and walking around.

Instead of the roof, maybe when the parents are out you could set up some kind of a table right at the window that the parents use to come and go and move the nest to that. They would definitely find them if they were en route to where the parents left them. Then when they got used to that location for a couple days, you could set up some kind of visual blockade around that table so the parents could continue to raise the young with privacy but the rest of the apartment could be accessed for your purposes as long as it was done fairly quietly.

At this age the parents will be away a lot. They need to spend just about all day trying to gather enough food for their own needs plus 2 rapidly growing kids. Normally during this period the parents will spend the night in or near the nest and feed the babes around dawn and dust and possibly a couple of additional times during the day. But you will have plenty of time with the little ones to try relocating them within the apartment in a more private and protected setting right at the open window they use.

Pigeons don't have fantastic senses of smell, so unless you rub yourself all over the babies or spray perfume on them or something like that, the parents won't smell humans and neglect the little ones because a human has handled them. I've handled baby feral pigeons a number of times and the parent will continue caring for them.

Maybe if you cut down a large cardboard carton so that it is completely closed on the indoor side and completely open on the outdoor side and put it on a table at the window, and you move the entire nest in as close to the shape and structure it has now as you can, maybe that will work.

Putting them on the roof would not be good, not only because the parents might not find them, but because if there is a major rain storm it could be really bad for them. Pigeon parents put nests underneath overhanging structures for good reasons.

Keep us posted,

- Laurie

[peedub]

Thanks for the suggestions Laurie! It's very encouraging to hear from someone with experience that handling them won't cause them to be abandoned.
My boss had suggested something similar. The window has quite a generous ledge and I should be able to build something that hangs inside the window (think reverse of an air-conditioner sleeve) and gives them the cover they need. I'll take some photos of before and after and let you all know how everything works out.

Patrick

[Al & Bobby]

Patrick

You're doing such a good thing for the pigeon family. I wish all landlords and managers were so compassionate. Thanks. Laurie gave you good advice.

One other thought - the fire escape?

[cyro51]

Thanks Laurie!

Have you successfully moved a nest? I have never tried it but was told that the parents do not recognise their chicks outside the nest until they are older and that even moving it a few feet confuses them.

The nearest I came to an attempt to move the nest was when two of my own pigeons had a nest in one of those cats igloos and water seeped up into it. I decided to take the (plastic) eggs and the nesting material out of the igloo and put them into a chinchilla nesting box which I placed exactly where the nest had been.

The hen (Domino) raised the alarm calling loudly for her mate Sir Poopsalot. They both examined the box, and their eggs, then looked around in confusion, walked in and out of the box and showed that they were totally bewildered. Domino went back inside for a while and sat on the eggs, then came out again and looked around to check that she was where she thought she was. They were extremely disturbed and would not settle. I placed plastic and clean bedding at the bottom of the igloo, put the nest and eggs back inside it and replaced the chinchilla box with the igloo again. Poopsie and Domino calmed down immediately and settled back into their routine.

Cynthia

[Trees Gray]

Thank you so much for your concern over these pigeons and their babies.

From my own experience it would be better for you not to disturb the nest for a few days, at least until they are 15 days old. In that case, if the parents should abandon them, it would be easier to hand rear them, as they can pretty much be hand fed pigeon seed.

Also, if you do decide to move the nest, please move as much of the stove that is under nest. It will make it easier for the parents to recognize, if the surroundings of the nest are the same. This may be a lot of trouble, but this is very important.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

Treesa

[pigeonmama]

Cynthia,
A chinchilla nesting box? :eek: I didn't know chinchillas laid eggs!! :p
Daryl
Bet you all can tell that I'm feeling better.

[FlyByNight]

From my own experience it would be better for you not to disturb the nest for a few days, at least until they are 15 days old. In that case, if the parents should abandon them, it would be easier to hand rear them, as they can pretty much be hand fed pigeon seed.

Treesa

For certain it would be best to leave the nest where the parents built it as long as possible.

But I have seen parents care for a baby pigeon at I believe only about 3 weeks of age after it fell/fluttered to a ledge a whole 5 stories below the nest. The parents found it easily and continued to feed it with no problem. Your squeakers are 2 weeks old now, so this would mean you'd only need to leave the nest where it is for another week or so for the babies to be old enough for the parents to find and feed them at a nearby location - if it's true that they can't find or won't feed them if moved below a certain age, which I've never heard or seen before.

Again wishing you luck and hoping you will keep us posted.

- Laurie

[cyro51]

if it's true that they can't find or won't feed them if moved below a certain age, which I've never heard or seen before.

Is it a risk worth taking? This is from an old post by TerriB :

Pigeons will generally accept minor changes to the nest as long as you don't move it. Location is very important part of how they recognize their nest.

Cynthia

[cyro51]

This thread and the question of the age at which adult pigeons recognise their own young led me to do a bit of research and read a bit of the chapter on pigeon behaviour in Levi's "The Pigeon".

We know that when the young are around the 30 day mark the cock searches for them when they stray and recognises them outside the nest. John has observed this in his balcony pigeons: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pidgie/PIDGIES_PAGES/pppix3.html
John says that one day on a flying exercise towards late afternoon it got windy and wet and only one of PP's youngsters made it home to the balcony. The other one didn't return so PP, who had returned with the first squeaker flew off again and was last seen on the ground with the missing youngster. He must have stayed on the ground with him all night and brought him back home in the morning when the wind had dropped.

As to the stage at which they start recognising them it seems to vary from pigeon to and according to the youngsters' coloring. These are some excerpts from "The Pigeon" that relate to the importance of the location of the nest to the pigeon and their ability to recognise their own young ones (or parents).

"The devotion of the pigeon to its young is a beautiful thing…Up to the age of about two weeks, squabs can be freely interchanged without the slightest objection from its parents. As they grow older, however, specially if the squabs are of different colors , the acceptance of the substitute squabs depends upon the individual idiosyncrasies of the birds….In spite of the extreme tenderness and care that parent birds show their offspring when present, they show very little apparent grief when robbed of them. They fly to the nest, look for the squabs and, not seeing them, make no search for them anywhere, show not the slightest tinge of sorrow or regret , and shortly go, if they have not already done so, into another breeding cycle. I have noted only one instance of a cock bird’s searching for, finding, and feeding his missing squab…a three week old squab was taken from a White King-Carneau and placed across the room in an individual coop 8 feet away. The squab was black and white pied, easily recognizable. The parent cock came to his individual coop, and, finding his squab missing, flew out on the floor, looked around for it, perceived it in the other coop where it had been placed, flew up to it and fed it. Such instances, as stated, are rare”.



“As squabs grow older (three to five weeks of age) they appeal for food to any pigeon which comes near them. They do not recognize their parents and only learn from rebuffs that food cannot be obtained from every bird.”



“In May 1917, I moved a pen of White Carneaux to the loft of a relative, they were kept there until my return from the war in August 1919. The arrangement of nests in the latter loft was different to that in the former. Immediately upon replacement in the original loft practically every pair resumed possession of its original nest – a memory of location of nest lasting about 28 months”



Cynthia

[Al & Bobby]

Patrick

Any news? I hope it works. If not, we'll help find a caretaker for the little squeekers.

Al

[John_D]

Found my reference to squabbie recognition:

Pigeons and Doves of the World - Derek Goodwin (1977)

"Pigeons, like passerine birds, learn to rcognize their young as individuals about fledging time...... Once the stage has been reached at which the young are individually recognized by the parent, the latter's parental impulses have reference to its own young as individuals. A male pigeon whose flying young have become separated will feed to one part of the food he has collected and then go and give the rest to the other. If they have separated since he last visited them he will search for the second young one in order to feed it. Very often, in such circumstances, the first young one is still begging eagerly for more food when its father leaves it. It is therefore obvious, at this stage of the breeding cycle, that the parent does not just blindly respond to appropriate stimuli but understands that it has two young, each of which need feeding."


Knew I had it somewhere!!

John

[peedub]

Hi all. I apologize for my belated post but I had an extremely busy week.

After our chat the other day I went to work and built a box out of some bookcases from the garbage. I made it so it would hang well inside the window and protect the babies from any rainy weather.

I moved the nest and babies (and the burner cover from the stove!) into the box.

I hung the box in the window and, after some initial confusion, the parents took to it and continued rearing their offspring.

I had planned to post my pics as a type of photo essay but I couldn't figure out how, so you'll have to suss them out for yourselves.

The first 2 pics are from the initial move and the last one is from today.

Thanks to everyone here for all of your suggestions and I really appreciate all of your time and consideration.

Yours sincerely,
Patrick

[Lin Hansen]

Hi Patrick,

This is great news.....it's so nice you went the extra mile for this family.
Thank you.

Linda

[Reti]

You've done great, Patrick.
Thank you.

Reti

[cyro51]

That is excellent news! Thank you for going to so much trouble and also for updating us. They are lucky little squabs to have been discovered by you.

Cynthia