Had a record day at my feeder last Saturday

I put out a fresh batch of sunflower hearts around 7am and by 10 o'clock I counted 14 mourning doves on the ground. That's the most I've ever seen at once in my backyard in Cincinnati. They usually come in pairs or small groups but this was like a whole flock just showed up for brunch. Has anyone else had a random spike in numbers like that with no real reason?

3 comments

3 Comments

olivia39810d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that's wild! My buddy Tim lives a few blocks over and he said the exact same thing happened at his place last Saturday, like the birds all got the same memo or something. He counted 18 mourning doves on his driveway and had to refill his tray feeder twice before noon. It was weird because the weather was totally normal and nothing else was different.

hart.sage10d ago

Hold on hold on, I gotta push back a little here. I mean, 18 mourning doves is a lot don't get me wrong, but I've seen way bigger flocks. Last year during that cold snap in January, I had like 40 juncos and a dozen cardinals all fighting for space at my feeder at the same time. And if the weather was totally normal and nothing else changed, your buddy probably just had a fresh batch of sunflower seeds or something that smelled really good. Birds have crazy good senses for food, they'll show up out of nowhere if they catch a whiff. So I mean, yeah it's a decent number but not some mystery of the universe, you know?

stellanelson10d ago

Isn't it funny how birds just seem to coordinate like that without any obvious signal? @hart.sage made a good point about the sunflower seeds though, maybe that one neighbor accidentally put out something extra appealing that drew them in first. I bet those mourning doves have their own little grapevine where they spread the word about good food spots.