29th Jan
Today I picked picked up a very young, and freshly dead, collared dove chick off the pavement in Brookhouse. It was under a suitably dense evergreen tree so I assume it had recently dropped from a nest. It still had the egg tooth, so probably only a day or two after hatching. Based on a two week incubation period and a clutch size of two, that would suggest a laying date of about 13th January – even more remarkable given the very cold spell of weather we were having then.
Ian Hartley
