The Call

On March 25th I received a voicemail that all rescuers fear: 39 doves and 1 pigeon needed a new home. Their person had late stage cancer with not long to live. Her good friend Karen was also an animal rescuer and had found safe new homes for the dogs, chickens, even a 30 year old horse, but the doves’ only option seemed to be “set free” which was no option at all for the helpless birds.

As you probably know, Palomacy is always full. Overfull. The demand for our work far exceeds the capacity to do it. Every new bird in need of help is a new challenge. Let alone 40 birds. As much as these doves needed a place to go, we had no space to offer them. It is an awful feeling. Sometimes we can surge here or there. Or sometimes we can work with a shelter for emergency housing but we had no such option this time.

My conversation with Karen the animal rescuing friend was heartening. She totally understood our situation and was committed to helping us to help her friend’s birds. When she told me she was on her way to a horse rescue, I asked her to please ask them to help. And everybody else, I said. Please reach out to everybody! Doves are lovely, not hard to care for and we help every step of the way. Karen promised she would. I asked her to send photos of the birds. Their situation was bad.

The Visit

On April 9th, given access to the property, Palomacy volunteers Jill & Nath met in Gilroy to assess and assist the birds. There was a big aviary with five compartments but all the birds were crammed into just two. The four Eurasian Collared doves (ECDs) were in a compartment with a pigeon and the 35 domestic Ringnecks were all crammed into another. The wooden walls of the aviary (unlined with hardware mesh) had big holes chewed into them by the rats who were eating all the babies and weak or injured birds. We call this a “survival of the fittest” flock meaning there would have been a lot more if not for the predators who were killing off the most vulnerable birds. Jill and Nath spent the day helping to improve the birds’ safety and well being. First thing, the unnamed pigeon, now called Marigold, was removed from the ECDs’ compartment for transfer to Jill’s pigeon aviary for fostering. Pigeons are two to five times bigger than doves and conflict between them means injuries for the smaller doves. The four ECDs were more bald than feathered from their fighting. Next they worked to seal up and block off the many holes and gaps the rats were using to raid the aviary. Then, to provide some much needed relief to the overcrowded Ringnecks, they cut out mesh dividers into two adjacent vacant compartments so that the doves could spread out across three times as much as space as they’d had. Finally, they swapped out real eggs for fakes and gifted the doves with some long grass stalks for nesting. They were ecstatic.

The Adopter

When I asked Karen to ask the horse rescue (and everybody) for help with the doves, she took my plea to heart. And she did ask and Dennis Barwick, founder of The Backstretch Equine Rescue said, Yes! Oh my goodness! What an INCREDIBLE life-saving, hope-inspiring difference saying yes to a rescue aviary makes! We were thrilled to have Dennis’ help and quickly started figuring out how we could, during this most challenging of times, work together to make a safe, happy new home for all these doves as quickly as possible. The first thought was to try and move their old aviary from its location in Gilroy to the Backstretch Ranch in Aromas and then fix it up there but ultimately that just couldn’t work. The structure, even if we could have moved it, just wasn’t salvageable. So then we had to quick figure out an emergency interim solution.

Rescue Day

On April 15th, Palomacy volunteers Jill and Nath and I met in Gilroy to catch and transport all the birds to their new home. We caught everybody, triple checked that no one was over looked and then, all boxed and podded up, we headed for The Backstretch Ranch.

The Backstretch folks had a temporary solution: a great big dog kennel (15′ long x 5′ wide x 6′ tall) set up right next to the ponies. The kennel provided a good, sturdy frame but needed to be carefully and completely wrapped in .5″ hardware mesh to be made safe. Caged birds attract rodents and predators and nothing keeps them safe- not guard dogs nor motion lights nor having what one considers a “predator free area” except for an inpenetrable enclosure. If the enclosure is safe, the birds inside are too. If not, they are not. I hope you never come outside to discover the carnage rats, racoons, raptors, etc. can create when birds aren’t safely enclosed. (Pro Tip: Chicken wire is completely worthless for keeping predators and rodents out. Stuff should be illegal!)

So we got busy cutting .5″ 19 gauge hardware mesh from a 100′ x 6′ foot roll to fit the sides, top and bottom and attaching it tightly with lots of zip ties. We carefully overlapped all the corners and seams because any gap means the enclosure is no longer predator-proof.

Thanks to several hard-working volunteers from both The Backstretch and Palomacy, we had the doves’ temporary aviary secured and comfortable with nest boxes (made by Jill) and branches, a smooth barnmat floor and partial siding and roofing for shade, privacy and protection from the elements together in a few hours.

And then the best part. We got to move the doves in. They were pretty amazed at their new lifestyle upgrade!

Fundraising campaign coming soon: Help us make the Backstretch Doves’ Educational Rescue Aviary dream come true!