There was a pair of them who perched right outside my window a couple of weeks ago.  I’d hoped they were building a nest, but no luck.  (They had understandable concerns about having a shanty Irish neighbor.)

But they’re still around!  I could hear them a few minutes ago, sounding their call as they seem prone to doing near the end of the day.  Mourning doves and whippoorwills are the two birds whose song will always transport me back to being a kid in rural-suburban Long Island.  They’re little lyrical time machines.

Photo credit: Paul Danese, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

New apartment building between Salem and Campbell Avenues, Roanoke, Virginia, May 2025.

It’s hard to believe the old bus station used to be here.