[Crispus]

Hello,
I have a question about the behavior of mourning dove parents. On Friday, my wife was trimming some tree branches and accidentally destabilized a mourning dove nest that she hadn't known was there. The nest had a parent dove (who flew away) and two nestlings. She attempted three fixes for the nest, eventually putting it in an empty hanging basket, but scared away the parent each time she did this. We were worried that she might have frightened away the parents for good, but we saw a dove on that nest for a large portion of Saturday, when we had a lot of rain.

So, we were feeling comfortable that all was well...but then, Saturday night, we observed from our house that there was no bird on the nest overnight. We also did not see the parents all day Sunday, nor Sunday night, nor this morning. So, we're concerned that the parents might have abandoned the nest after all, even though we haven't been near the nest since Saturday morning. Does anyone know if this is normal behavior for doves and nestlings? Do the parents leave nestlings alone overnight? The nestlings were still alive as of this morning, but I can't tell if they've been fed recently. I've contacted two area wildlife rehabilitators, but haven't received any response yet.

[Crispus]

Well, I guess the parents did abandon the nest, for whatever reason. We saw that one of the babies was dead Monday afternoon, so, since no rehabilitators in the area would help (they only take injured wildlife), we opted to try feeding the remaining baby ourselves.

We followed instructions we found on the internet and bought some Kaytee handfeeding baby parrot formula and a syringe, and my wife has been feeding it successfully for the past four days. However, she fed it this evening, it started breathing through its mouth a little, rhythmically. It wasn't doing that before. So, I think a little food might have gotten into its lungs.

I've called around, but there aren't any vets available to look at it until tomorrow morning. I assume we should avoid feeding it anymore until then (about 13 hours)? Is there anything we can do to verify it has a problem, and if so, help it recover?