Well, it’s been a traumatic afternoon for the little mama. I went out to clean, and instead of fleeing immediately like normal, Ladyboy bravely stayed on her eggs until I just got too close. She finally fled. Naturally I had to move the pots around but was careful. Ladyboy kept flying back and forth between here and the window frames, almost like she was trying to scare me away. She was visibly distressed about the entire matter. She even flew away completely and returned a few minutes later a few times, with The Bully following, looking like a concerned mate trying to come his sweetie down. That’s really what it looked like.
Finally when I moved the pots back, I transferred the eggs into the flower box, which was right next to the living room. I stepped inside, and the wife and I watched. Ladyboy came back and couldn’t find the eggs! Looked all around the living room. Even looked up and around, as if they were up toward the ceiling somewhere! We kept pointing and telling her to look down, look down. She started making these little mournful noises. Okay, that was it. I went out and moved the eggs back into the living room. All was well after that. The little mother found them and was happy. Dad’s on them right now. We’ll leave them there even though the flower box really is a better place. At least I’ve moved the flower box elsewhere on the balcony and pulled the living room back a little more, because it was just too exposed if a heavy rain comes.
Yes, eggs can be “drowned” and that could easily happen in a flowerpot during a heavy rain. Nice try, on moving them somewhere safer. Silly birds.
Glad to hear that Ladyboy has been reunited with her eggs.
It’s going on 11pm Sunday night, and Ladyboy is out there staring at me as I write this. I’ve read that pigeons live in cities because they like humans. But I can’t decide if she keeps staring because she’s fascinated with us or because she’s worried she’ll be murdered in her sleep if she dozes off.
I took some more pictures today and will add them to the ones above on Flickr soon. These ones will show a freshly cleaned balcony. 
Managed to feed Henry and Geri both today. The Bully attacks Henry now. They each keep taking turns being afraid of the other. I have to keep The Bully down, don’t want to squirt him with water, so I shake my finger at him. He took turns on the eggs today but for the second night is sleeping elsewhere. I think I disturbed him too much.
Eight new photos, all taken this past Monday afternoon.
The Bully, the father, the on the eggs. Notice he’s another white one. No doubt related somehow to Henry and Ladyboy. His black markings are almost all around his face, whereas Ladyboy has some on her back too. But neither is quite at Dalmatian status like Henry.
Then we have Henry. Right profile. And left profile.
Ladyboy adjusts the eggs. And then sits on the eggs.
Henry eats while daughter watches. And in this shot, you can see the splash of green paint on Henry’s tail. He managed to get that when they were painting the building. That was months ago now.
And Ladyboy sits and stares at us on a freshly cleaned balcony. That was in the daytime, but that’s pretty much what she’s doing to us right now as I write this after 11pm Saturday night.
The eggs are now nine and seven days old. We hope to start seeing squabs late next weekend maybe. Maybe Monday the 17th. Around then. I’ll have to make a couple of short videos of them. The Bully and Ladyboy have settled into a regular routine now. He stayed here near her the first couple of nights, but now it’s just her at night, and they switch off in the daytime. Those same other three or four white ones now keep trying to come here and sleep right at nightfall. We think they may be trying to copy Ladyboy, but they clearly annoy her, so we have to chase them away. It’s cute to see how they sort of try to sneak in though.
We saw a near Henry look-alike today. A big Dalmatian that strongly resembled Henry. But the head markings were off, and he seemed timid. Plus it looked like someone had pissed all over him. The real Henry showed up later, handsome guy, and clean except for the green paint. We figure the new one might belong to Henry and Geri. A second, smaller white one with some black markings showed up later, also all pissed on. They may be siblings who just left the nest, maybe following Mom and Dad here.
Oops! That was actually after 10pm I wrote that, almost 10:30, in case anyone gets confused about the time zone. We’re seven hours ahead of GMT.
Thanks for the new pictures! I’m glad Ladyboy got over her trauma of the missing eggs. 
I’m looking forward to seeing some videos of the squabs.
The photos of her are after we put back the eggs. That’s why she seems to be giving me a dirty look.
The good old don’t-mess-with-my-eggs stink eye.
Actually, I’m not sure now if that’s Ladyboy or The Bully. The markings are looking more like the father’s.
Okay, that is The Bully after all. The father. I remember now that I even took the shot to show a front view of him. My bad. I’ve changed the Flickr label to reflect this. But all of the other photos tagged as Ladyboy are correct.
We should be just a few days away from squabs. I’m estimating the first egg will crack about Sunday. The Bully and Ladyboy are still in their settled routine of day and night shifts.
And now, we may have squirrel eggs! There’s a tree outside one bedroom window. I’m not sure if it’s on the mansion grounds next door or on our side of the fence, but the top of the tree is just about level with our sixth-floor window. This morning, I noticed a squirrel running up and down it, bringing back what looks like building materials from elsewhere in the tree with every upward journey. Do squirrels build nests? The leaves obscured what he was doing with the materials at the top, but there was definitely some activity going on there. Seems to be gone now though.
Yes, squirrels build nests. One afternoon I watched a squirrel going out to the ends of branches and picking out just the right little shoots and carrying them to a nice sheltered crook in my oak tree. She spent a good hour doing that. We have lots of squirrels so I never know which ones are babies. I don’t think they leave the nest until they are pretty big. There are always one or two other nests high in the tree and occasionally a storm will bring them down so apparently this mother wasn’t having any of that.
I hope all goes well with the egg hatching in the next few days! Will Henry or the other pigeons try to bother the squabs?
That will be interesting to see, but I don’t think they will. Already Henry has completely stopped getting angry at and attacking Ladyboy. No other pidgees have bothered the living room either. It’s as if an eggs-in-nest situation is instinctively sacred and off limits. I don’t expect any trouble.
The squirrel disappeared after a while. I’ll see if he’s back tomorrow. He was doing something up in that tree.
Sunday morning, 8am. Still no squabs. But we’re getting close. The older egg is 17 days now. I remember that Big and Little Pidgee would both take off and leave the eggs unattended for short periods after a week or two, but that’s not been the case with Ladyboy and The Bully. One of them is always in attendance. That could be due to the presence of more pidgees now.
That squirrel is definitely building a nest in the tree outside our bedroom window tree. Industrious little fellow. Seems to do it only in the morning. But the nest is getting bigger and can now be seen more easily through the leaves. The tree is on our side of the wall from the mansion after all, but it’s about eight feet out from our window, so they’ll be no opportunities to feed him. I’ll have to take some photos.
And we have a squab!
Little Charlie hatched sometime in the past couple of hours. Monday morning, June 17. I’ve taken some pictures and a couple of videos, although there’s not much action yet. Will try to post those soon.
And I think I see a little hole appearing in the other egg.
Yay Little Charlie! I came here to see if there was an update. Can’t wait for pics!
And we have the second squab! Little Kelly hatched sometime today, we think tonight. We just noticed her about half an hour ago, about 10pm. We were out and about this evening – today is actually our wedding anniversary, and we had a nice pizza dinner at Limoncello – and returned home about 7:30pm. We could still see Charlie, poking out from underneath Mama. Then after 10:00, suddenly we saw two squabs squirming around. The eggs were laid two days apart, but they hatched maybe 12 hours apart. Right now, Ladyboy’s got them completely covered and has fluffed herself up. But welcome, Kelly!
Some photos from earlier today. Charlie, about two hours old, give or take an hour. The egg is Kelly’s. Note the hole appearing in the top right of the shell and a slight outward indentation below that and to the right. That’s Kelly trying to come out, I think.
Charlie again. As we know now, the large dark area that look like eyes are actually what will become the nostril area. The hole on the side of the head that looks like an earhole is actually a nostril. He’ll be blind for several days until the real eyes open.
And Charlie again after Papa rearranged him a bit in the early afternoon. In this photo, notice the bit of eggshell in the next tree pot. That’s all that’s left of Charlie’s egg. Nothing in the living room. We figure it must have stuck to Ladyboy when she left. Since the shift change is about 11am, we think Charlie hatched before that. But there were still two eggs when I looked earlier this morning.
I have not figured out yet how to rearrange photos into their proper order on Flickr, but I’ve not really explored it all that closely yet. Will have to do that. In the meantime, I have a couple of videos of Charlie to post to YouTube, but it seems to take a long time, so I don’t know if that will get done tonight.
Photos of Kelly too coming soon also. (But truth be told, she looks a lot like charlie right now. And no, we don’t really know their genders; we’ve just arbitrarily assigned them.)
Oops! Now we’re thinking we’ve had a Kelly before. Since Multiply.com went down, it’ll take some digging to check, but we’re pretty sure we’ve had a Kelly before. These are different parents, so maybe it would be okay, but we’ve just done a quick rename to Mandie.
So welcome to the world, little Mandie! 