Henry, aka The Dalmatian

[Siam Sam]

We have a new feral hanging around. We've been calling him The Dalmatian but lately have segued into Henry.

Here are some photos, taken between August 14 and today ("today" being Tuesday, September 8 even though it's after 1:30am of the 9th now):

Henry and temple. Maybe you can't see him all that well, but I like the background.

This one is better. You can really see his spots there.

And here, you can see his wing pattern. This is, of course, his right wing. The funny thing is he's not quite symmetrical; the pattern on the left wing is just a little less intricate than the pattern on the right wing.

Henry and The Lady. He's on the rail below, and she's up on top.

A closer shot of her is here. She is very feminine-looking, sleek and elegant. But Henry does not seem very interested in her. Indeed, we think they may be siblings. Both are white, and she does have a few black spots. We've not seen her for almost a week now.

And a close-up of Henry.

Henry inspects the flower box. This was the day after the Big Battle while we were away, mentioned down below, and we'd not cleaned up yet. You can see the little spirit house knocked down on the left.

A three-quarters view. More of that nice right-wing pattern.

And one more.

Henry hangs around for a large part of each day. In the flower box, on the rail, in the "living room" (the tree pot). Seems to be guarding his territory. We returned home on Saturday to find the aftermath of a big battle on the balcony -- dirt everywhere from the flower box, the water dish moved, the little spirit house knocked down -- and Henry in the middle of it all, preening. Guess he won!

We have a little birdseed left over from the experiment with Little Pidgee and so put a little out for him. But like Little Pidgee at first, he didn't recognize it as food and so ignored it. However, Little Pidgee and The Stranger, who must be monitoring the balcony, sure recognized it, and they kept trying to fly in to eat it. This caused Henry to have a hissy fit, and he'd puff up, dance around, make threatening noises and finally chase them off. Then he would fly straight after them if they didn't go far enough away, like a little attack pigeon! After a couple of times of this, we removed the food, because we could see this was going to be nothing but trouble. Still keep water out there, though.

Although Henry's clearly an adult, we think maybe he's still young. He does not seem to have a mate. Again, that pretty white pigeon has not come around again lately, but they didn't seem to be mates anyway. Possibly siblings.