Fly away already! The saga continues!

The drama of the baby mourning dove continues.  We last left off after the baby hatched and appeared to be preparing to take flight.  It didn't make it very far.  About five feet down to ground level and five feet south to be exact.  And right into the landscape in front of our house.

In my last post about the baby, I mentioned that I thought I had injured the mommy bird because I inadvertently scared the poor thing after trying to water the hanging plant that it was hiding in.  Well, the good news is that both mommy and daddy birds appear to be alive and well.  The bad news is that the baby bird has remained in my landscape, on the ground, for about a week or so now.

I'm truly amazed it is still alive and that no animal has eaten it for dinner. But every morning I go out to get the newspaper and there it sits on a large rock in our landscape.  It's survived some pretty severe storms, some of the hottest days in history here, and a big drop in temperature at night. And every morning, there it sits.

I leave it birdseed every day but I fear that Chip, the chipmunk, is eating it instead.  I no longer see the parent birds drop in to visit the baby bird so I don't believe that it's still being fed.  Yet, day after day, it just sits in my landscape.  It never moves to more than the rock and then behind the bush.

Sugar, in the doorway, wondering why the bird won't fly?

We know it CAN fly a bit because my neighbor, out of concern that it may not be eating, snuck up to my porch and added some fruit and nuts to my bird seed.   The baby bird didn't see her coming and freaked out...flying about 25 feet away and landing on a window ledge.  I thought then that it may take flight, but a few hours later it was back in the landscape.

I'm no longer worried about it every minute of the day because I don't know what else I can possibly do for it.  It needs to fly away... for it's welfare and my sanity!