Leaving the Nest Photos + A Chef Kid

There've been some exciting developments with our beautiful little parakeet-sized diamond doves.

They mated and laid two eggs shortly after moving in. The eggs were infertile and we threw them away after three weeks. They kept right on trying and got it right the second time. The eggs hatched at two weeks, Special D (dad) and Coco (mom) fed them diligently, and here are the chicks.

The family portrait. The chicks are perched on the edge of the nest, Coco is sitting high up in the grit dish, Special D is on a lower perch.

Another family portrait shot.

The two chicks. The one on the left was born larger and darker than the one on the right. The one on the right has his/her eyes closed because of the flash on the camera. It won't be possible to tell their sex until they're fully mature. Males have thicker orange eye rings than females.

You'd think this chick is bravely preparing to launch himself into his new independent life. In fact, he's a sneaky little sucker! He's already flown from the nest down to the ground, onto a perch, and back up to the nest again for his free regurgitated lunch. His parents are getting ready to have some new eggs, so there's only so long he can pull this "feed me, I'm still helpless!" trick.

We're giving the chicks away, and they're going to an outdoor enclosure to live with some ringneck doves. We can't keep them in the cage as they'd breed incestuously. The next time Special D and Coco lay eggs, we might use a form of birth control advised by a diamond dove website: replacing their eggs with plastic ones that they'll endlessly sit on. It sounds a bit cruel but I guess they don't understand the difference.

In other news, we went to an event today with some of the kids my mother and husband are tutoring. It was nice meeting the kids. I was helping to make the salad for the dinner, and a Congolese 5th-grader said he wanted to chop tomatoes. I'd heard this particular kid could be a hellraiser sometimes... but certainly not today.

I gave him some tips on chopping, because his chopping skills were frighteningly bad. Mine aren't that great, but I know to always cut away from my hand. I told him he wouldn't grow up to be a great chef if he cut off his fingers by accident! We talked about cooking for a while, and he was so enthusiastic about it. Of course he wanted to go to cooking school. He liked "Iron Chef" but his favorite show was "Hell's Kitchen". He wanted to know if Gordon Ramsay was really that mean in real life, or if it was all just for show, but I couldn't give him an answer on that one. He told me he cooked for himself a lot at home. I know the subtext for that statement could be very sad, because many of the kids in the program are parentified and take over the daily responsibilities that their parents, traumatized from fleeing war zones, can no longer deal with. Although we talked about famous chefs he clarified that his goal was very down-to-earth: chefs had good jobs and good pay, and that's why he wanted to be a chef.

I've never worked as a cook and probably won't in the future, but I do love cooking, and talking to a kid who loves cooking is a real treat.