Lonely young wood pigeon

Hello, a young wood pigeon has been visiting my garden for a few weeks, I believe it’s a young one because it doesn’t yet have the white and green markings on its neck. It rests in the trees or under the hedges, eats and drinks, but doesn’t have a sense of danger, if I approach it it’ll quietly walk away but doesn’t fly off unless I raise my voice and wave my arms. I only do this if it’s in the front garden because there are a few neighbours cats that visit my front garden and I don’t want it to get attacked. If it’s in the back I will put bird seed on the lawn for it, I have bird baths at ground level  and a number of hanging feeders for small birds. I’ve seen it drinking. Amongst the many small birds I have two pairs of adult wood pigeons thst visit daily, I’ve seen at least one pair chase it from the lawn when it’s eating. My concern is that it’s been on its own for at least 4 weeks now, I’ve read that the youngsters stay with the flock and the adults are always in pairs. Im also concerned that it’s apparent lack of fear will mean it could get attacked, although its reassuring to see it’s survived this long. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks. 

  • Hi we had a solitary young wood pigeon a couple of years ago. I called it Woody. It hung about by the food and water. I got concerned that it couldn’t fly because it walked away from us if we got too near, so my husband tried to catch it. It flew away, landed on our roof and gave us a LOOK.

    In short it was ok. I hope it’s survived bird flu, but we’ll never know. I think it was very happy to stay with the food and water and looking back it didn’t seem distressed and for all I know it was more than 1 wood pigeon.

    The real danger when they just hang about is cats. We have lots of cat scarers, but I each year we have one or two birds killed in our garden.