Which one are you? An update on My dove work

As my readers already know I have 10 doves, 4 parent stock and 6 second generation. All the offspring are from the same father, he's a tangerine dove named StudMuffin.The reason I got tangerine doves was that my performance character is the SteamPunk Time traveling Magician and Canine Psychic , Dr Vir Lateus Dentum. Steampunk involves a lot of copper and brass tones in the costume and props so when I decided to work with Doves I wanted birds with the orange color in their feathers. Its actually a very nice match.

As with all animals, each bird has a bit of a different personality and each is better at certain things than others.

                                                             4 of the 6 second generation

All 6 of the birds were hand held and fed while sitting in my hand from very early on.

 Even with that some of them are more tolerant of handling than others. #5 and #6 the youngest of the birds are currently still the most relaxed and take well to being handled and in the harnesses and load chambers of the various effects. #2 is good with siting on my head and won't fly off,

                                      Not the best picture of me but there's #2 on my head.
#3 is the most aggressive and hasn't responded to the training very much at all. #1, and #4 actually have god days and non cooperative days. But through it all I have had one problem......telling them apart without lifting them and looking at their tag numbers! So I decided to get different colored leg tags. Most leg tags come in a single color set, so all of the bands are orange. Now I've had to buy a few different colors and keeping their numbers, they will all have different colors. Now when it comes time to go through the training exercises I will be able to just pick up the dove I need to work with. Simple solution but sometimes the obvious simple solution is the one we miss. Which is the message for this post. I've been spending a lot of time working on my different shows. My Street show, my table to table show, my walk around show, and even my stage show. All related to the different venues at which I perform in my magic life. The work when putting together a good show is to stuff it full of great magic and good scripts and sometimes music, then start the real hard work of cutting things out to streamline and fine tune everything to get rid of what is really unnecessary. You need to get rid of the stuff that my clown teacher Dick Monday of The NY Goofs taught us that the great Clown Lou Jacobs called, "Shpegetti" Its very temping to keep adding magic and the latest effect I've found on ebay or trick I've learned at an SAM or IBM lecture and I need to work had to keep things tight and focused. More  magic isn't better, its just more complicated. Everyone advises to KISS and its good advice.
By the way I got the same advice from Jeff McBride at Mystery School! You'd think I'd learn it by now.....
So when your planning your act and show don't overdue it, just get rid of all the Shpegetti!
Be Well
Keep 'em clean