My husband and I are about to become grandparents. Not to a human grandbaby, mind you, we still don’t have any of those. We do have three grand-dogs, including one by marriage, but not any babies that crawl or get around on two feet. That may still happen in a year or so if my daughter and her wife are successful with IVF, but now we are about to get twins who fly.

About two weeks ago, we discovered that a mourning dove—we’ll call her Dovey, for short–had made a nest out of one of our hanging porch planters. The planter has a unique shape, sort of like a beehive, and is perfectly positioned under the eaves of the porch so that it hardly gets wet during heavy rains. The dove flew out when we tried to water the plant with a garden hose a week ago. Getting on a step stool when Dovey was out, I discovered she had laid two little white eggs.

I always thought of doves as being white, but a birding friend of mine set me straight. Both male and female mourning doves are known for their brown and gray coloring (maybe that’s where “mourning” comes from?), black spots, small heads, and slender tails. Their long, pointed wings are almost falcon-like and longer than those of other doves, enabling them to fly as fast as 55 mph.

Mourning doves are common in the contiguous United States and can be spotted almost anywhere—cities, backyards, farms, but mostly in open spaces. They make a soft cooing noise, almost like owls. I haven’t heard Dovey coo yet, but then I’ve been trying to give her some space. My lurking around the planter might cause her to abandon her unborn chicks for another home.

Mourning doves are in the pigeon family and mate for life. The male initiates the courtship by puffing out his chest and bobbing his head. He may also preen the female and nibble her head and neck. The male and female then engage in “billing,” a process where the male opens his beak, and the female inserts her beak into his, pumping their heads up and down. When ready to copulate, the female crouches down and the male mounts her. You might think that’s a little weird, but if aliens came to observe some human ways of courting and coupling, they’d think it strange too.

The female generally lays two eggs at a time. Incubation takes only about two weeks, and Dovey has been sitting patiently on those eggs for at least five days now. (After a bit of research, I discovered that both parents take turns incubating the eggs, so maybe it’s the father—I’ll call him Davey– that we sometimes see keeping things warm.) We will be grandparents to twins any day now!

According to “Birds & Blooms,” male and female mourning doves work together to feed their babies. They secrete something called “crop milk” or “pigeon milk” from their crop lining and regurgitate it to the chicks. Rich in protein and fat, it resembles cottage cheese. By the fourth day, the chicks can graduate to seeds, and within two weeks, they are fully fledged and ready for flight.

It will take a lot longer for my daughter and her wife to conceive, gestate, and successfully deliver a baby into the world. They’ve chosen to pursue “reciprocal IVF,” a process that involves taking the eggs from one partner, having them fertilized by a genetically compatible donor, and implanting a successful embryo in the other partner. IVF is invasive, expensive (not covered by insurance), and not always successful.

But tests done so far are positive, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Maybe Dovey’s selection of our planter for her breeding is a positive omen for the future. I like to think so. Of course, human children take longer to be weaned and fly the coop. But for wannabe grandparents, that’s just fine!