Mourning Dove with Feather

Photograph by Matt Blaze

May 8, 1999. Palo Alto, California. Dove couples supposedly share the work of tending the nest, with the male sitting in the day and the female sitting at night. This particular bird, however, appears to be a single mother. Another (male?) bird would drop by from time to time, but I never saw any evidence that they ever switched places. Image taken on 35mm Fuji Velvia (RVP) film under natural light with a Nikkor AF 80-200mm F/2.8 zoom lens attached to a Nikon F3 camera body mounted on an Arca-Swiss B1 ball head atop Bogen 3221 tripod legs. Digitized with a Nikon LS-2000 film scanner and converted to JPEG with Adobe Photoshop 5.0. Copyright © 1999 by Matt Blaze. All rights reserved. You may not copy, modify or use this image for any commercial or non-commercial purpose without permission. Click here for other bird photos.