by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 7, 2022 | history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators
Impatient for winter to be over, we had put on our boots to go seeking signs of spring but had instead found a sign of the previous summer. We must have walked past this thicket a score of times last summer without ever noticing birds around it, but here is a bird’s nest among the branches, at eye level, in plain sight now that winter has stripped away the last of the leaves.
It would be easy enough to pass it by. If we pause to look closely, though, it becomes more intriguing. We may never know what kind of bird built the nest, because there are several species here that might construct this type: an open-cup shape lashed into a three-way fork in an upright twig. But it inspires a sense of wonder beyond mere questions about identification. Somehow a small bird knew how to gather the myriad materials for this structure. Somehow this bird arranged scores of small pieces of twig and grass and weed and bark, weaving them together with such precision that the nest is still sturdy and secure after being exposed to the winter’s rain and wind. Considered in the proper light, this little bundle of dried vegetation is really a small miracle.
“My favorite palette is the color of winter decay,” says photographic artist Sharon Beals. It’s 7 a.m. in San Francisco, but she is already on her way out the door to work on her project for the day. Much of her professional photography takes her outside, “wandering a river for hours, looking at bugs, muck, and minnows,” as she says, or photographing native plants or their pollinators. Today, though, she will spend up to 11 hours in a museum, examining birds’ nests and photographing many of them. The results will add to her growing collection of nest portraits—extraordinarily detailed images that have already wowed scientists and artists alike.
Beals became immersed in this subject almost by chance when a friend, knowing her fascination with the subtle minutiae of nature, brought her an abandoned bird nest. Studying it, she knew she had to find a way to capture its intricacy. Using a very high-resolution flatbed scanner, she made images of this nest, and then another, and another.
But problems loomed. For one thing, she says, after turning a nest upside down on the scanner, she might have to spend hours cleaning all the dust that falls from the nests off the images in Photoshop. For another, as she discovered, possessing these nests was illegal.
Beals overcame the first challenge by moving to very high-resolution cameras and by taking multiple exposures, focusing on different planes, then melding the images together. But the second problem was tougher. The laws protecting U.S. birds are far more sweeping than most people imagine. Without special permits, it is illegal for private citizens to possess most species of native birds, or their feathers, or their eggs, or even their abandoned nests. The laws may seem excessive, but they were enacted at a time when our birds were under siege from commercial plume hunters and recreational egg collectors, and they were written to be wide-ranging and inclusive. Rather than give up or break the law, Beals turned to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the California Academy of Sciences, and soon had permission to come in and photograph nests from among the hundreds in the institutions’ specimen collections.
The popular image of natural history museums may be of a handful of stuffed creatures on public display in glass cases, but most keep the majority of their specimens in research collections out of public view. The nests at the California Academy of Sciences were mostly collected decades ago, at a time when relatively little was known about birds’ habits. These specimens provided basic data points then, and they continue to be scientifically valuable today.
For Sharon Beals, they also provided a treasure trove of artistic possibilities. She spent days at the academy, examining and photographing nests. “These first images gave me the satisfaction of seeing the materials on almost a cellular level,” she says. “I loved the quiet, subdued palette, and the shapes created by the form-follows-function art of the nest builders themselves. I loved the amazing variety of content and construction, the way the materials became like line and brushstroke.” When she began printing the images larger than life, on sheets of fine etching paper two feet across, others shared her enthusiasm. Visitors to her studio were fascinated. Almost invariably they became intensely curious. Beals had found a way to make people see the nests, truly see them, as cause for wonder and for endless questions about the birds that built them.
Birds do not live in their nests the way humans live in their houses. A few species, such as some wrens, will use them as shelters to sleep in at night, but they are the exceptions. For the majority, the nest is just a cradle. Built to hold the eggs and the helpless young, it is abandoned once the young birds are old enough to leave. In most cases it is never used again.
There is evidence that some dinosaurs built primitive nests on the ground and even cared for their hatchlings there. Today many creatures besides birds—from wasps to mice to alligators—shelter their young or their eggs in nests that they construct themselves. But for variety of placement and material, and for sheer complexity of design, nothing can compare with birds’ nests. Especially among smaller birds, nests are often remarkable for their inventive use of local materials to provide support, shelter, and camouflage. The nests are tiny marvels of disposable architecture.
The skill to create them comes almost entirely from instinct (although there is evidence that young adult birds, making their first nests, do improve with practice). Studies have shown that at least some birds, hand-raised in captivity, can build a nest typical of their own species without ever having seen one. The instinct to do this must be flexible, because the locations and materials available for nests in the wild vary, but it must be based on a considerable amount of precision as well.
Even a small bird’s relatively simple nest may be composed of several kinds of material used for different purposes. For example, a white-crowned sparrow’s may have coarse twigs at the base, finer twigs and weeds intertwined with rootlets and bark strips to form the open cup, dry leaves in the outer edge, and fine grasses and other soft materials molded into an inner lining. And that’s just a simple number. A more complex nest, such as the long hanging pouch of an American oriole, may involve actual weaving or sophisticated knots tied in long plant fibers, and it may take days of intense effort to build.
Most birds are opportunistic when it comes to building materials, and will readily incorporate manmade items into their nests if they fit basic requirements of size and texture. Paper, string, nails, pieces of wire, and bits of fabric regularly show up in the handiwork of suburban birds. In some areas house finches have become a minor nuisance by dismantling nylon window screens to use the strands for their nests.
In many cases, though, the materials chosen must have specific properties. Studies of nesting European starlings have found that the birds were selecting certain plants, such as wild carrot and yarrow, containing chemicals that would inhibit the growth of mites and other parasites. In eastern North America the great crested flycatcher often adds a piece of shed snakeskin, and the power of suggestion imparted may help deter predators or other intruders. Chipping sparrows often use animal hair (gathered in farmyards, or even plucked from startled pets) for their nest lining. Feathers are also ideal for soft, insulating lining material. Big birds like quail or ducks use their own down feathers for this purpose, but swallows and other small birds prefer feathers dropped by larger birds. A truly extreme example of material gathering is practiced by certain tropical swifts, fast-flying small birds that will actually strike much larger birds in midair to knock feathers loose.
As a very general rule, females are the skilled builders. For many species they do all the construction, including some (such as hummingbirds) for which males abdicate any responsibility for helping with the nest or young. In other cases, the male provides the basic foundation and the female adds the detailed lining. A male marsh wren may build 20 or more “dummy nests” around his territory; the female chooses one, adds lining, and uses it as the actual site for the eggs. The male’s building spree is not wasted effort: The presence of all those decoys may provide some protection for the real one, as predators tire of raiding nests that turn out to be empty.
Some of the most impressive nests are also among the smallest. A hummingbird nest is a wondrous creation of tiny plant fibers, mosses, and spiderwebs, so small that a 50-cent piece would completely cover it. It is as soft as felt but strong, with the spiderwebs making it pliable enough to stretch and expand as the rambunctious young hummers grow and exercise in it. Many hummingbirds will camouflage the outside with bits of lichen. At a distance such an object looks, for all the world, like a natural bump or knob on the branch, thereby deceiving potential predators in the mother bird’s absence.
At the opposite extreme are eagles. A pair of bald eagles may use the same nest for years, adding material to it annually until it becomes huge (an extreme example can reach a depth of 20 feet and a weight exceeding two tons). Such a nest is merely a ramshackle heap of sticks, hardly an admirable piece of avian architecture, but it does have its admirers: House sparrows and other small birds sometimes tuck their own nests into the lower crevices, and great horned owls may commandeer the entire nest, perhaps even driving the eagles from their aerie.
The finest nests are crafted by smaller birds, however, and the majority are never reused, not even by their original builders. It seems all the more remarkable that birds should create these intricate structures for such ephemeral use. It seems ironic, too, that most of us are not legally allowed to possess these nests, even after they have been abandoned. But when we are lucky enough to find them in the wild, or see them revealed in works of photographic art like the ones reproduced here, we cannot avoid holding them and the birds that made them in absolute awe.
Source
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 7, 2022 | MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators
This morning as I was getting some worked finished, I noticed two crows on the roof across our ally. They had a large object which I first thought was something from the dumpster and then noticed what looked like it had chicken feet. I opened the window to get photos. Because it was cold out, the heat from my window made for some fierce shimmer and the photos are blurry…but you get the idea of what they are eating. Again, if you don’t like gross stuff, or don’t like the whole predator prey relationship thing, stop reading now.
When I first saw the feet, I was reminded of the quail that we get to feed the birds at The Raptor Center, but there are no quail around here. Then I realized that the bird the crows were eating had only pin feathers–it was a young bird from a nest. By the size, I realized that they were eating a pigeon nesting.
The two crows made short order of the chick. By the size and development, I would guess that the pigeon was about ten days old–which is interesting in and of itself. If the pigeon chick was about ten days old, the egg would have been laid 18 days before that, so the pigeon parents were busy in early March–at least two snow storms ago.
The pigeon nest was tucked in a nook on the roof of an apartment building just to the right of where the crows were eating. I’ve seen pigeons in and out of there all winter and assumed roosting–I didn’t guess that they were on eggs last month.
When the crows were finished, I went back to business in my apartment. About fifteen minutes later I found them working on another chick. That surprised me. It makes sense to clean out a whole robin nest–those are small chicks, but a pigeon chick is fairly large, I was surprised that they ate both nestlings right away, but when you find a huge protein source like that and you are in the process of laying eggs yourself, you’re not gonna be able to resist it.
And let’s keep in mind that this is gross and it may not be pretty to watch a crow clean out a nest–but they are not the only ones to do it. Blue jays do it, hawks do it, owls do it–even woodpeckers do it. Heck, even nut job humans in England do it. Crows are just more obvious about it.
Source
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 7, 2022 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons, Sparrows, UltraSonic Bird Control
How do animals become problems? Drawing on interactionist theories of social problems and cultural geography, I argue that the construction of animals as problems relies upon cultural understandings of nature/culture relationships, which in turn entail “imaginative geographies.” Specifically, modernity posits a firm boundary between nature and culture. Animals have their place, but are experienced as “out of place”—and often problematic—when they are perceived to transgress spaces designated for human habitation. Relying on New York Times articles from 1851 to 2006, and articles from 51 other newspapers from 1980 to 2006, this article focuses on the process by which pigeons as a species were problematized. I contend that pigeons have come to represent the antithesis of the ideal metropolis, which is orderly and sanitized, with nature subdued and compartmentalized. While typified as a health issue, the pigeon’s primary “offense” is that it “pollutes” habitats dedicated for human use. The catch phrase “rats with wings” neatly summarizes society’s evaluations of, and anxieties about, this bird. This metaphor reflects a framing of pigeons by claims-makers that renders them out of place in the cityscape. This study expands social problems theorizing to more thoroughly account for animals and the role of space.
Source
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Mar 7, 2022 | 4-S Gel Bird repellent, Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spikes
Being a peregrine fanatic I’m kind of fond of pigeons – at least from the prey point of view – so when I was in downtown Pittsburgh on Sunday I stopped by Mellon Square to check out the scene.
Even for a peregrine falcon the number of pigeons at Mellon Square is way too much of a good thing. I counted more than 150 and I couldn’t see all of them. The pigeons outnumbered people more than 30 to 1.
This explains why peregrines hang out on the Oliver Building window sills. It’s like visiting an all-you-can-eat restaurant. The food may not be that great but there’s so much of it!
This kind of pigeon over-population repulses most people and they want a quick fix, the quickest being poison. But if you poison a pigeon, you’ll poison a peregrine. After a culling episode pigeons reproduce fast to fill the void – in fact lethal control actually increases the flock – but the peregrines take years to recover. And peregrines are endangered in Pennsylvania. It’s bad, bad, bad to poison an endangered species.
So what to do?
Pigeons need two things to reach the numbers found at Mellon Square: lots of food and places to nest. They reproduce in direct proportion to their food supply. If food is scarce some won’t nest at all. If food is plentiful they lay the next clutch of eggs before the first set has hatched, producing more than 12 chicks per year.
The food problem is obvious. Sidewalks at Mellon Square are coated with bird seed. Control the food source (the people who feed them) and you’ve got most of the problem licked. To make a really dramatic difference, control the nest sites as well.
City pigeons nest on buildings and bridges. They also nest in buildings. Find the buildings involved and spend the time and money to block the access holes. Last summer the University of Pittsburgh cleaned the Cathedral of Learning and blocked off the pigeon nest holes as part of the cleaning job. One year later there are far fewer pigeons at Schenley Plaza.
And finally, there’s a foolproof solution that makes both the pigeon-feeders and the pigeon-haters happy. Many European cities have solved their pigeon problem permanently by building dovecotes and pigeon lofts. Yes, they built nest sites. They control the population at the dovecotes by substituting dummy eggs and they control the food level by giving pigeon lovers an approved place to feed and interact with the birds.
This keeps the pigeons and the birdseed off the street. An elegant solution.
Source
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 22, 2022 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons, Sparrows, UltraSonic Bird Control
Though they’re often described as “rats with wings” (a phrase popularized by the movie Stardust Memories), pigeons are actually pretty cool. From homing instincts to misleading rump feathers, here are 15 things you might not know about these avian adventurers.
1. THEY MIGHT BE THE FIRST DOMESTICATED BIRD.
The common city pigeon (Columba livia), also known as the rock pigeon, might be the first bird humankind ever domesticated. You can see them in art dating back as far as 4500 BCE in modern Iraq, and they’ve been a valuable source of food for thousands of years.
2. THEY WON OVER CHARLES DARWIN—AND NIKOLA TESLA.
Pigeon-breeding was a common hobby in Victorian England for everyone from well-off businessmen to average Joes, leading to some fantastically weird birds. Few hobbyists had more enthusiasm for the breeding process than Charles Darwin, who owned a diverse flock, joined London pigeon clubs, and hobnobbed with famous breeders. Darwin’s passion for the birds influenced his 1868 book The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, which has not one but two chapters about pigeons (dogs and cats share a single chapter).
Nikola Tesla was another great mind who enjoyed pigeons. He used to care for injured wild pigeons in his New York City hotel room. Hands down, Tesla’s favorite was a white female—about whom he once said, “I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman and she loved me. When she was ill, I knew and understood; she came to my room and I stayed beside her for days. I nursed her back to health. That pigeon was the joy of my life. If she needed me, nothing else mattered. As long as I had her, there was a purpose in my life.” Reportedly, he was inconsolable after she died.
3. THEY UNDERSTAND SPACE AND TIME.
In a 2017 Current Biology study, researchers showed captive pigeons a series of digital lines on a computer screen for either two or eight seconds. Some lines were short, measuring about 2.3 inches across; others were four times longer. The pigeons were trained to evaluate either the length of the line or how long it was displayed. They found that the more time a line was displayed, the longer in length the pigeon judged it to be. The reverse was true too: If the pigeons encountered a longer line, they thought it existed in time for a greater duration. Pigeons, the scientists concluded, understand the concepts of both time and space; the researchers noted “similar results have been found with humans and other primates.”
It’s thought that humans process those concepts with a brain region called the parietal cortex; pigeon brains lack that cortex, so they must have a different way of judging space and time.
4. THEY CAN FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO THE NEST FROM 1300 MILES AWAY.
The birds can do this even if they’ve been transported in isolation—with no visual, olfactory, or magnetic clues—while scientists rotate their cages so they don’t know what direction they’re traveling in. How they do this is a mystery, but people have been exploiting the pigeon’s navigational skills since at least 3000 BCE, when ancient peoples would set caged pigeons free and follow them to nearby land.
Their navigational skills also make pigeons great long-distance messengers. Sports fans in ancient Greece are said to have used trained pigeons to carry the results of the Ancient Olympics. Further east, Genghis Khan stayed in touch with his allies and enemies alike through a pigeon-based postal network.
5. THEY SAVED THOUSANDS OF HUMAN LIVES DURING WORLD WARS I AND II.
Pigeons’ homing talents continued to shape history during the 20th century. In both World Wars, rival nations had huge flocks of pigeon messengers. (America alone had 200,000 at its disposal in WWII.) By delivering critical updates, the avians saved thousands of human lives. One racing bird named Cher Ami completed a mission that led to the rescue of 194 stranded U.S. soldiers on October 4, 1918.
6. TWO PIGEONS ALMOST DISTRACTED FROM THE DISCOVERY OF EVIDENCE OF THE BIG BANG.
In 1964, scientists in Holmdel, New Jersey, heard hissing noises from their antenna that would later prove to be signals from the Big Bang. But when they first heard the sound, they thought it might be, among other things, the poop of two pigeons that were living in the antenna. “We took the pigeons, put them in a box, and mailed them as far away as we could in the company mail to a guy who fancied pigeons,” one of the scientists later recalled. “He looked at them and said these are junk pigeons and let them go and before long they were right back.” But the scientists were able to clean out the antenna and determine that they had not been the cause of the noise. The trap used to catch the birds (before they had to later be, uh, permanently removed) is on view at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
7. YOU CAN TRAIN THEM TO BE ART SNOBS …
Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe and two colleagues earned an Ig Nobel Prize in 1995 for training pigeons, in a lab setting, to recognize the paintings of Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso and to distinguish between the painters. The pigeons were even able to use their knowledge of impressionism and cubism to identify paintings of other artists in those movements. Later, Watanabe taught other pigeons to distinguish watercolor images from pastels. And in a 2009 experiment, captive pigeons he’d borrowed were shown almost two dozen paintings made by students at a Tokyo elementary school, and were taught which ones were considered “good” and which ones were considered “bad.” He then presented them with 10 new paintings and the avian critics managed to correctly guess which ones had earned bad grades from the school’s teacher and a panel of adults. Watanabe’s findings indicate that wild pigeons naturally categorize things on the basis of color, texture, and general appearance.
8. … AND TO DISTINGUISH WRITTEN WORDS.
In a 2016 study, scientists showed that pigeons can differentiate between strings of letters and actual words. Four of the birds built up a vocabulary of between 26 and 58 written English words, and though the birds couldn’t actually read them, they could identify visual patterns and therefore tell them apart. The birds could even identify words they hadn’t seen before.
9. FLUFFY PIGEON FEET MIGHT ACTUALLY BE PARTIAL WINGS.
A few pigeon breeds have fuzzy legs—which hobbyists call “muffs”—rather than scaly ones. According to a 2016 study, the DNA of these fluffy-footed pigeons leads their hind legs to take on some forelimb characteristics, making muffed pigeon legs look distinctly wing-like; they’re also big-boned. Not only do they have feathers, but the hindlimbs are somewhat big-boned, too. According to biologist Mike Shapiro, who led the study, “pigeons’ fancy feathered feet are partially wings.”
10. SOME PIGEONS DISTRACT FALCONS WITH WHITE RUMP FEATHERS.
In a life-or-death situation, a pigeon’s survival could depend upon its color pattern: Research has shown that wild falcons rarely go after pigeons that have a white patch of feathers just above the tail, and when the predators do target these birds, the attacks are rarely successful.
To figure out why this is, Ph.D. student Alberto Palleroni and a team tagged 5235 pigeons in the vicinity of Davis, California. Then, they monitored 1485 falcon-on-pigeon attacks over a seven-year span. The researchers found that although white-rumped pigeons comprised 20 to 25 percent of the area’s pigeon population, they represented less than 2 percent of all the observed pigeons that were killed by falcons; the vast majority of the victims had blue rumps. Palleroni and his team rounded up 756 white- and blue-rumped pigeons and swapped their rump feathers by clipping and pasting white feathers on blue rumps, and vice versa. The falcons had a much easier time spotting and catching the newly blue-rumped pigeons, while the pigeons that received the white feathers saw predation rates plummet.
Close observation revealed that the white patches distract birds of prey. In the wild, falcons dive-bomb other winged animals from above at high speeds. Some pigeons respond by rolling away in midair, and on a spiraling bird, white rump feathers can be eye-catching, which means that a patch of them may divert a hungry raptor’s focus long enough to make the carnivore miscalculate and zip right past its intended victim.
11. DODOS WERE RELATED TO TODAY’S PIGEONS.
Though most of this list focuses on the rock pigeon, there are 308 living species of pigeons and doves. Together, they make up an order of birds known as the columbiformes. The extinct dodo belonged to this group as well.
Flightless and (somewhat) docile, dodos once inhabited Mauritius, an island near Madagascar. The species had no natural predators, but when human sailors arrived with rats, dogs, cats, and pigs, it began to die out, and before the 17th century came to a close, the dodo had vanished altogether. DNA testing has confirmed that pigeons are closely related to the dodo, and the vibrant Nicobar pigeon (above) is its nearest genetic relative. A multi-colored bird with iridescent feathers, this near-threatened creature is found on small islands in the South Pacific and off Asia. Unlike the dodo, it can fly.
12. AT ONE POINT, MORE THAN ONE-QUARTER OF ALL THE BIRDS LIVING IN THE U.S. MAY HAVE BEEN PASSENGER PIGEONS.
Wild/feral rock pigeons reside in all 50 states, which makes it easy to forget that they’re invasive birds. Originally native to Eurasia and northern Africa, the species was (most likely) introduced to North America by French settlers in 1606. At the time, a different kind of columbiform—this one indigenous—was already thriving there: the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). As many as 5 billion of them were living in America when England, Spain, and France first started colonizing, and they may have once represented anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the total U.S. bird population. But by the early 20th century, they had become a rare sight, thanks to overhunting, habitat loss, and a possible genetic diversity issue. The last known passenger pigeon—a captive female named Martha—died on September 1, 1914.
13. THEY’RE REALLY GOOD AT MULTITASKING.
According to one study, they’re more efficient multitaskers than people are. Scientists at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum put together a test group of 15 humans and 12 pigeons and trained all of them to complete two simple jobs (like pressing a keyboard once a light bulb came on). They were also put in situations wherein they’d need to stop working on one job and switch over to another. In some trials, the participants had to make the change immediately. During these test runs, humans and pigeons switched between jobs at the same speed.
But in other trials, the test subjects were allowed to complete one assignment and then had to wait 300 milliseconds before moving on to the next job. Interestingly, in these runs, the pigeons were quicker to get started on that second task after the period ended. In the avian brain, nerve cells are more densely packed, which might enable our feathered friends to process information faster than we can under the right circumstances.
14. PIGEONS PRODUCE FAKE “MILK.”
Only mammals produce genuine milk, but pigeons and doves (along with some other species of birds) feed their young with something similar—a whitish liquid filled with nutrients, fats, antioxidants, and healthy proteins called “crop milk.” Both male and female pigeons create the milk in the crop, a section of the esophagus designed to store food temporarily. As is the case with mammal milk, the creation of crop milk is regulated by the hormone prolactin. Newly-hatched pigeons drink crop milk until they’re weaned off it after four weeks or so. (And if you’ve ever asked yourself, “Where are all the baby pigeons?” we have the answer for you right here.)
15. ONE STUDY SUGGESTS THAT, GIVEN THE RIGHT CONDITIONS, THEY’RE AS GOOD AT IDENTIFYING CANCER AS DOCTORS.
We’ve already established that pigeons are excellent at differentiating between artists and words, but a 2015 study revealed they can also distinguish between malignant and benign growths in the right conditions. Researchers at University of California Davis Medical Center put 16 pigeons in a room with magnified biopsies of potential breast cancers. If the pigeons correctly identified them as either benign or malignant, they got a treat, According to Scientific American.
“Once trained, the pigeons’ average diagnostic accuracy reached an impressive 85 percent. But when a “flock sourcing” approach was taken, in which the most common answer among all subjects was used, group accuracy climbed to a staggering 99 percent, or what would be expected from a pathologist. The pigeons were also able to apply their knowledge to novel images, showing the findings weren’t simply a result of rote memorization.”
Mammograms proved to be more of a challenge, however; the birds could memorize signs of cancer in the images they were trained on but could not identify the signs in new images.
No matter how impressive their results, “I don’t anticipate that pigeons, no matter how good they become at pathology or radiology, will be playing a role in actual patient care—certainly for the foreseeable future,” study co-author Richard M. Levenson told Scientific American. “There are just too many regulatory barriers—at least in the West.”
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