Roly-poly dove just trying to keep warm





 

 

Late one cold winter’s afternoon, I pulled into a parking spot at the Westlake Village Library on Oak Crest Drive. I was so chilled I lingered inside my toasty car a bit.

Through the windshield I spied the weirdest looking bird. It vaguely resembled a mourning dove, but its body was enormously plumped out. Its plumage looked like it had been caught in a laundry dryer’s spin cycle.

Not scientifically speaking, the dove’s appearance suggested a shaggy dog crossed with a grapefruit and Eddie Murphy’s corpulent character in “The Nutty Professor.” It was quite a fright to behold—teensy head and legs poking out of this rotund mass of freaky feathers. Like a bloated cartoon character, it looked about to explode.

Wiseacre observations notwithstanding,

I did worry for the dove. Was it ill? Despite its appearance, it did not seem to be in distress. The dove perched placidly atop a cement culvert, watching fellow mourning doves—all conventional-looking birds— sport about amid the ground cover and shrubbery.

Eventually the bloated bird decided to join its kin and began to waddle down the culvert. As it did so, its roly-poly form began to deflate. In a few paces, the dove was its usual svelte self.

Talk about miracle weight loss! I had to learn this bird’s secret—it could potentially make me millions.

On the sagebrush plains of the Western U.S., there’s a bird called the greater sage grouse. During courtship, it inflates a pair of air sacs in its chest that give it a bizarre appearance, suggesting a mighty chieftain’s ornate headdress strutting about on legs.

Alas, the male mourning dove is more shy than showy, lacking the male sage grouse’s inflatable mate-seeking splendiferousness.

Studying the bird before its “deflate” mode, I’d pondered whether it was feeling the cold’s bite and this was perhaps a way to shield itself from the chill.

In winter, my old mobile home in the Santa Monica Mountains of rural Agoura is the temperature of an ice cave, and I have to layer on about 15 pounds of clothing, becoming so bulky I can barely squeeze through my bedroom’s door. Well, well, what a strange coincidence. The roly-poly dove and I have something in common.

According to an article I later stumbled upon by Charles Eldermire on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, after a good meal some birds can use their metabolism to generate heat. Their fluffy down feathers, in addition to keeping cold air away from their flesh, do a great job of trapping body heat instead of letting it dissipate. A “fluffed-up” bird can tuck a foot or whole leg up in there.

It makes you think how lucky dogs are to have luxurious fleece and flannel dog beds and knitted doggie sweaters, while a wild bird gets by on the ingenuity inherent in instinctive behavior.

Glasser is a writer fascinated by all manner of natural phenomena surrounding her home in the Santa Monica Mountains. Reach her at ranchomulholla@gmail.com.


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