How do I protect mourning doves babies from dogs?
It is illegal to disturb an active nest, and if you move it too far, the mother will not be able to find it and the babies will die. Keeping the dogs out of the yard for a while is really your only option if you don’t want to see the babies killed. Can’t you walk the dogs on a leash until the babies are flying? If you have already been watching them for 3 or 4 weeks, it won’t be much longer. The incubation period for mourning doves is only 14 days and the babies fledge (leave the nest) 15 days after that. It will take a few days after that for them to be able to fly out of the way of danger – baby birds fledge (leave the nest) several days before they start to fly. They hop around on the ground, and they climb on low branches until their wings are strong enough for them to fly. The parent birds continue to feed and care for the fledglings until they are self-sufficient.
