[arobwk]

While I know WPs breed early in the year and can then, potentially, have more than one brood, what are they doing trying to mate this late in the year? 
While tidying parent's garden today (for a tidy look on my mother's 90th b/day on Monday) there was a duo of WP males chasing a female:  they stayed around/moved between the birch trees for quite a while and eventually I noticed one of the males actually mounting the female. 
What on earth is going to come of that?  Do they normally just "carry on" until a brood fails to hatch or chicks fail to survive for what-ever reason?   (I've not noticed this before;  which doesn't mean it is actually unusual.)

[Blondie]

I think their usual breeding season is April - October but they have been recorded breeding in every month. So although later in the year it’s not that usual for them to still be trying

[Goatherd]

   Happy Birthday to your mum

[Buttermilk]

They try to breed all year round here.

[arobwk]

But can they sustain late broods?  (I know they provide breast milk to their young, but ....)

[Rupert the bear]

The ones here are still on the go , the question is , puff or shortcrust pastry ?

[arobwk]

The ones here are still on the go , the question is , puff or shortcrust pastry ?

Short-crust every time for me or, even better, proper pasty pastry.  (I have no idea how to make the latter so don't ask.)

Pigeon pasty - now there's a thought and it has a certain ring to it (no pun intended) doesn't it ?!

In passing:  my paternal grand-mother had two pasty recipes - the standard steak, potato, onion & turnip (swede to most of you) and then she had the bacon, potato and leek pasty.  I've no idea how she prepared her leeks, but I have to say her bpl pasties were something else !  She was Cornish born and bred so her bpl pasty was still definitely "Cornish".  Of course, which ever recipe, the pasty-ends always overlapped both sides of the plate !!
 

[Fleecewife]

But can they sustain late broods?  (I know they provide breast milk to their young, but ....)

Err....I think it's crop milk.  Pigeons do have breasts but they don't have nipples and they don't produce milk 


Our pigeons live in a gun-free enclave, as long as they stay off my winterbrassicas 

[arobwk]

Yeah.  TY for the correction @Fleecewife 

[Fleecewife]

Yeah.  TY for the correction @Fleecewife 

Tongue in cheek, @arobwk 

Think what it must be like to be a baby penguin: stuck on the ice in a freezing gale, waiting weeks for your mum to come home with dinner.  At last she gets back and all she has for you is to barf up a gullet full of rancid fish    I'd take the pigeon breast milk any day 

[Mad Goatwoman of Madeley]

 

[arobwk]

I've since been told proper pasty pastry is "rough puff" pastry.  I'm not much the wiser about how to make it (or any pastry for that matter) although it's clearly sort-of half way between short-crust and puff.