r/AustralianBirds • u/VerucaSaltedCaramel • 11h ago

Spotted Dove/blue poo

A Spotted Dove has been hanging out on our balcony for 1-2 weeks. It will visit a few times a day and just sit there, chilling out. I noticed earlier in the week that it left a couple of bright blue poos. Anyone know what the cause could be? Is it sick? I've been leaving out some wild bird food mix that says it's suitable for doves (I did this after the blue poo - thought that it maybe was sick and didn't have energy to find food). It seems to enjoy it. Anyway, I'll let nature do its thing, but would love to know if it's sick and if so, if there's anything I should do/not do to make its life easier?

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u/Sad-Suburbs 10h ago

Could have been eating berries.

2

u/cassowarius 10h ago

Usually their poo goes more of a purple colour after eating berries. I feed blueberries (and other berries) to my birds quite often and it doesn't look like this. This is like metallic blue. I've not seen birdshit like this before.... I've seen a lot of birdshit.

2

u/Sad-Suburbs 9h ago

We grow olives/berries/stone fruit and the shit produced can be very blue. The shit the OP shows looks normal to me, but who knows! What do you think it could be? Nothing sinister I hope.

2

u/cassowarius 8h ago

No idea. Spotted doves mostly eat seeds and grains and sometimes small fruit like maybe flax lily or blueberry ash, which are quite shiny. I reckon you're on the money and it is from some form of fruit, perhaps just not one that grows around my area.

u/evilhenchdude 10h ago

Has it eaten something full of artificial colouring? I can't imagine that colour occurring naturally.

2

u/VerucaSaltedCaramel 10h ago

No idea. There's nothing at our place that they could have gotten into and I'm not sure where it spends its time when it's not visiting us.