Abstract
When I graduated from high
school, my fiance gave me a beautiful
pair of white doves. That was the
start of something great in more ways
than one! In the last 30 years we have
raised four children and lot of birds.
We have kept a little bit of everything,
except the big, noisy birds, as
we live in a residential neighborhood
and have always tried to respect that.
After raising parakeets, cockatiels,
lovebirds and five different kinds of
conures, we have found that our true
loves are finches, softbills and doves -
especially fruit doves.
Two years ago we acquired a pair of
black naped fruit doves from our
friend Richard Schmidt. We fell in
love with these beauties right off, and
were lucky enough to get them to go
to nest and present us with a new
baby every few months.
In the spring of '88, my husband
came across four nondescript-looking
fruit doves. Having just been released
from quarantine, they appeared to be
in sad shape, but to us they were irresistable.
Since the weather was still
cool and the birds looked less than
robust, we kept them in a small cage
in our quarantine area. At night we provided them with a heat lamp.