Dan's Feathursday Feature: Rock Pigeon

Have a pet peeve. Have many pet peeves actually, but one is especially annoying. It’s the recent tendency of folks to drop the personal pronoun from the subject of their sentences, as in “Have a pet peeve.”

OK, when carrier pigeons and telegraph were a thing, can understand why might want drop unnecessary words. Stop. But email and other advances now allow us to be as wordy as we dare. And from the many unnecessarily long emails have received in my career, often starting with the phrase “Happy to hear from you,” am certain that most writers are not dropping the personal pronoun for the sake of brevity.

Know risk sounding arrogant, but can’t help self. Would like to shout: If don’t want to use the personal pronoun, start learning Italian instead, where the verb endings make subject pronouns unnecessary. Guarantee that when struggling to conjugate the cogiuntivo trapassato of the verb volere, will throw up hands in despair and come crawling back to English, with its simple verb + pronoun combination, and write the language as your mother taught you to write it.

Ahh, nice rant. Feel better already.

Speaking of pigeons—or to use their proper English name, Rock Pigeon—this fascinating bird is as ubiquitous and annoying as exclamation marks in a teenager’s text messages, and as overlooked as a subject pronoun in a Twitter post.

I invite you to consider your relationship with the Rock Pigeon. When is the last time you woke up and said, “I hope I see a pigeon today”? Or as you nestle into bed at night, “What a great day! I saw 47 pigeons. On territory.” On your walk to the local market, as you pass under the “L” tracks, do you slow down and approach silently, so you can count the roosting pigeons before they flush? And make field notes of variation in plumage across individuals?

When you live in the city, pigeons are taken for granted as just part of the ambience. Like graffiti, or rats, or Über drivers. In fact, some people refer to pigeons disparagingly as “rats with wings.” I think if you asked the average person on the street where pigeons come from, you might be told that they sprout like mushrooms when enough dust, grime and discarded newspapers collect under viaducts and overpasses—winged fruit of an unseen mycelial network whose tendrils infiltrate every nook and cranny of our metropolis.

I’m here to tell you that’s not where pigeons come from. The poor, maligned Rock Pigeon has been around much longer than even our oldest cities, and the more you learn about the history of the common Rock Pigeon, the more you will see it for the noble creature it is.

The Rock Pigeon is not native to North America. It was a bird of the area we now call Europe, North Africa and western Asia, making its home in the cliffs and ledges of rocky shorelines. Its close relationship with humans dates back at least as far as 5000 BCE, where it appears in cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia. Archeological records indicate the Rock Pigeon may have been domesticated as far back as 10,000 years, making it the world’s oldest domesticated bird.

While the folks east of the Atlantic were domesticating Rock Pigeons, though, the civilizations of North America had to make do without them, because there were no Rock Pigeons in this vast continent. Its close cousins, like the Mourning Dove and the Passenger Pigeon, were here in great number, but Rock Pigeons did not appear on roofs and ledges of this continent until the 1600s, when they were brought over by European immigrants.

While the arrival of the Europeans to the North American continent quickly sent the endemic Passenger Pigeon the way of the Dodo (another cousin of the Rock Pigeon, by the way), the newly introduced Rock Pigeon thrived. Those domesticated pigeons that escaped the early settlers’ dovecotes quickly established healthy colonies of feral pigeons. The rest is history. The estimated 8.4 million feral pigeons that grace the roofs and underpasses of America today are descended from those Rock Pigeons originally introduced from Europe four centuries ago.

Why have pigeons always been so much part of human society? At first, they were probably domesticated for food. In time, humans learned that, besides tasting good and being quite easy to care for, this bird has an uncanny ability to find its way home, no matter how far it wanders. So those pigeons that were not eaten were pressed into service as messengers. The Egyptians released pigeons to announce the rise of a new pharaoh. The Greeks used pigeons to pass on the results of Olympic contests. Genghis Khan established a communication network throughout his empire with the help of pigeons. During the two world wars of the 20th century, pigeons were sent flying through enemy lines, risking life and limb to deliver important missives. More pigeons were awarded medals of bravery for their role in saving lives during those wars than any other service animal.

I cannot help but note the irony of a bird that is a symbol of peace being drafted into wartime service. The “heroism” of these pigeons would have been completely unnecessary if we humans could take to heart their peaceful symbolism and figure out how to avoid war altogether. But I digress.

Beginning in the 18th century, with ever newer techniques of selective breeding, many new breeds of pigeon were developed. Some for their beauty or unique shape, like the Pouters. Others for their flight skills, like the Racers, the Tumblers and the Rollers. There are now about 800 pigeon breeds, and probably a thousand pigeon fanciers for each of those breeds. In Taiwan alone, about half a million people keep pigeons for racing. Many famous people can be counted among those with a soft spot for pigeons: Elvis Presley, Mike Tyson, Maurizio Gucci, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Roy Rogers, Pablo Picasso, Marlon Brando, Willie Mays, and last, but not least, Queen Elizabeth. There’s clearly a pigeon breed for every imaginable taste and career track.

Of course, whenever we humans get involved in using birds and animals for our own needs and fancies, ethical issues arise. Because there is big money to be had from pigeon races, racing pigeons are often pushed to grueling and dangerous extremes for the sake of their owners’ fame and fortune. Raptors are an obvious threat to any flock of pigeons, and pigeon owners are notorious for illegally killing hawks and falcons in large numbers to protect the precious tenants of their coops. There is a flipside to this coin. Feral city pigeons are a primary food source for the Peregrine Falcon, a majestic raptor that is enjoying a rebound, thanks to the hard work of conservation organizations in large cities all over the world—and thanks to the Rock Pigeon.

I’ve been pooped on by city pigeons many times, on three continents. One flew full speed smack into me once as I stood on the corner of State and Randolph. Despite these battle scars—and the dry-cleaning receipts to prove them—I remain an apologist for this bird of long and noble lineage. I encourage you, too, to turn an eye of appreciation their way, even as you run the gantlet of two dozen Rock Pigeons perched on I-beams above you. If you do get pooped on, it’s not the end of the world. There’s a modern tool in your pocket to help you get the word out. Pull that smart phone from your pocket and thumb a pronoun-less tweet: “Just got bombed by a pigeon! LOL Hair and suit ruined  Work from home again today!! #pigeonpoop #pigeonsmatter #playinghooky”

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and photography of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.