The Days of Christmas (Part Two of 12 epic parts)

Two turtle doves?  Now I confess I’m not such a keen ornithologist.  A turtle dove could be so-named for its vestigial shell for all I know.

Research is required and, fortunately for me, BT has relented and provided some much needed bandwidth.  Turtle doves are of the Columbidae family, much loved of poets who think of their soft purring as romantic.  (The poets never mention that turtle doves feed their young on regurgitated food; but perhaps they couldn’t get that to scan in iambic pentameter).  Anyway, turtle doves were taken as a symbol of undying love back when ‘The Twelve Days…’ was being written (that’s the Eighteenth Century, if you remember part one of my epic quest).  Since then, human action has stomped all over their natural habitat.  Lacking seed and grain as food during the breeding season, they’d stopped feeling the joys of spring and there has been a fearful decline in turtle dove rumpy-pumpy of late.

Worse, they are a migratory species.  By December, the impotent has-beens have headed off to warmer climes in Africa.  How my predecessor ever got hold of any in winter is beyond me (I suspect a longbow-man crouching on the cliffs of Dover).  Anyway, there’s a clear problem here: turtle doves have metaphorically left the building.

Ebay, I discover, offers only bone china turtle doves.  A website called turtle-doves.co.uk offers knitwear, but most of it’s cashmere (i.e. expensive) and none of it comes with turtle doves knitted across the chest.

I am indebted, therefore, to birdtrader.co.uk.  They can’t sell me turtle doves, but they do have a nice description of the breed and its care and dietary needs.  They also sell pure bred doves, which are almost the same, except white.

Success!  My love will have her two turtle doves and all will be well, as long as it doesn’t rain or she decides to shampoo her new pets.  At short notice, I could only get a dodgy brand of hair dye (the blue-grey body colour came out of the little-old-lady range of blue rinses, but getting the black mottling into the cinnamon plumage took hours with the paintbrush I used to use for Airfix models).

One note for anyone attempting to follow my example: if you’re presenting your turtle doves in a cage, make sure you put something over any wire mesh in the base.  Turtle doves are apt to stick their heads through the gaps and then rotate themselves into a locked position.  A bird, however magnificent, is not at its poetic best with its back side stuck permanently in the air and squawking pitifully.

… Three French hens next.