A mother has given birth on a window ledge at Burnaby Hospital – and it’s not the first time.
Longtime staff say a pigeon currently warming a couple of hatchlings on a fourth-floor ledge off the surgical ward returns every spring to raise its young with a mate who is said to keep watch.
The nesting site, behind large windows off a busy hallway, gives staff, patients and visitors a chance to bear witness to the annual drama.
“It happens every year and it becomes this huge thing because everybody walks by here to visit their family in the wards, so there’s grandkids, kids, parents, and everybody will stop and see the baby chicks,” surgeon Dr. Mark Dickeson told the NOW.
Victor Stusiak, who’s been a patient in a nearby ward for the past two weeks, was a case in point.
The former Burnaby city councillor and Freeman of the city stopped by to check on the bird Monday afternoon on his way to some tests.
“When I first looked, she had two eggs on the side,” he said. “She was alongside; she wasn’t sitting on them.”
An ex-farm boy, he said his first instinct was to calculate the bird’s hatching time.
Kitimat visitor Lois Slovak said she didn’t see the eggs at first but thought the pigeon looked like a brooding hen.
“Finally, she was repositioning herself, and I saw a couple eggs, and I was so excited,” she said.
Longtime staff still get excited about the babies even after years of witnessing the event.
When porter Josephine Beaudoin wheels or walks patients from one part of the hospital to another, she usually stops at the window for a moment to give them a chance to check on the family’s progress.
“It’s so nice,” she said. “It just brings you joy.”
It doesn’t last long, though, according to registered nurse Jenny Lee, who’s been watching the birds for three years.
“They grow so fast,” she said. “I had five days off one year, and I came back here, and they had grown half the size of other pigeons.”
Precisely because the baby pigeons bring joy to so many people, however, Dickeson tries to put a stop to the spectacle every year.
He’s no spoilsport; he’s just seen the dark side of their annual struggle for life.
One year, early on a Saturday morning, he looked in on the babies after crows had ravaged the nest.
“They call it a murder of crows – there’s a reason for it,” he said. “Nothing could be done to save the chicks that day.”
Mercifully, the predators were done their bloody work early.
“Nobody really knew what happened to the pigeon babies but me,” Dickeson said.
Now, every time the pigeons start scratching a nest together on the ledge in late winter, he tries to prevent them by tapping on the window, but the birds set up shop anyway, and the circle of life goes on.
“People think I’m crazy,” Dickeson said, “but it’s for a good reason.”
