grandad kit

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Poor baby pigeon

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

I can't remeber if I told you before, but a pigeon has been nesting in the tree outside our front door. This has happened only once before. The mother pigeon built a great big nest of twigs in the tree, she sat on the nest for a good while and eventually a baby pigeon was born. The mother fed the pigeon and it got so fat that it tipped over the nest out of three tree and the nest fell to the ground. Fortunately, by that time the baby pigeon was big enough to fly away and look after itself. But that happened only once before.

For several years there was another pigeon nesting on the end of our terrace. This was a smaller type of pigeon, a collar dove, a beautiful greay bird with a black collar at the back of her neck. I only ever saw the one bird, so where the daddy collar dove was, I don't know. One year our neighbour pulled the next down, but the bird built it up again and carried on using it every year. I neversaw any baby pigeons come from this nest, but I did find broken egss on the pavement below. Nana Ann thinks other birds like crows would come and try and steal the eggs, but drop them on the pavement.

Well, this time I found a complete egg, with just a little break, lying on our front path. There was a baby pigeon inside, but all cold and dead. Now whether it was already dead in the nest and the mother pushed it out, or whether it fell out andgot killed, I don't know. The mother pigeon stayed in the nest for a few days more, but then flew away. So I've only ever seen one baby pigeon from those two nests, all those years. And the collar doves are now nesting in another house - not the same bird as before, but probably one of its children or grandchildren.

This is a sad story, but things are sad sometimes. But there are still lots of pigeoons flying around, so they must be nesting successfully somewhere!

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann