I have two morning doves going at it on my fire escape. Their cooing is a constant and I often catch glimpses of their the feathers ruffling as they mount one another. Sometimes when I sit down at my kitchen table for morning coffee, it can result in a case of coitus interruptus for the birds.

Lately, one of them as been spending a lot of time in my windowbox, making herself at home; I suspect, that she's making a nest. While I would love to have morning dove chicks in my window box and see them learn to fly, but every time I go to use my sink, I scare her off. Birds have tiny brains and hardwired flight responses so they won't get used to me, and these morning doves are particularly skittish. English sparrows probably wouldn't care. When they're eating my herb box, I bang on the window and it still barely dissuades them.

So I'm worried that if I let them nest, I won't be able to use my kitchen sink for fear of scaring the parents away from the chicks. But with all the leveling of city blocks for condos in this neighborhood, they might not have many other places to go. I might need to make a kitchen bird blind.