What is wrong with this mourning dove? (1 Viewer)

Hello Bird Forum -

I am a new user and would like to introduce myself. I live in Nova Scotia, Canada, and have a lovely assortment of birds and other wildlife visit my deck everyday throughout the year.

We have a number of mourning doves that frequent our feeder and live amongst the trees close at hand. This particular fellow is something I've never seen before and am concerned about. It looks to me like this might be a cat attack, as his tail is missing and he has clearly had some trauma to the back of his head. While he has some obvious damage, he still flies, feeds and otherwise seems fine. He doesn't seem worse day to day, but I wonder if there might be something else wrong with him.

Any thoughts? Bgalberta

Hi there and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum :t:

Could be any number things - mite infestation, a scrape with a BOP or as you say a victim of a feline. As long as it is eating and flying, it should get back to normal before long. Do keep us posted though please.

Cat would be my guess also. Must have been a narrow escape.

We wondered about a BOP as well. We have had a couple of unfortunate incidents in the past few months with a hawk. First, about two months ago I caught a flurry of feathers out of the corneer of my eye when a group of doves and squirrels were gathered on the deck feeding. It was like someone was having a small pillow fight. I thought one of the squirrels must have startled a dove, although I didn't quite think that many feathers would go flying.

About 6 weeks ago one of the mourning doves flew into our glass doors on the deck and about 10 seconds later a smallish hawk flew in and grabbed the dove whilst it was still laying there stunned. I was completely shocked!

We have also had a cat wandering around here, but I haven't seen him in months.

Just had another visit from our Lucky friend and he seems okay again today. I guess it is just nature's way although I was reconsidering whether I should be putting any seeds out as I might be creating a diner for the hawk.