Pigeons

by Read Listen Learn

In the middle of 2012, a report appeared on international news channels. A man in England had decided to clean a long-neglected chimney in his cottage. It had not been done for many decades, certainly not in the owner's lifetime, so he was not surprised when the skeleton of a bird fell out onto his living-room floor.

What did surprise him, though, was the tiny metal canister tied to the bird's leg. Inside was a coded message on a piece of rice paper.

All at once, he knew this must be a pigeon – what other bird could do this job of long-distance messenger? Further research by experts quickly showed that the pigeon and the message dated from the Second World War. This pigeon had been carrying a message from a top British general in Normandy, France, to his HQ in London. It must, somehow, have died on the way and fallen into the disused chimney; it waited sixty-eight years to be found again. It can rest in peace now: its message has been delivered, albeit a little late to change the chances of winning the war.

Message carrier, source of meat and eggs, distance racer, pet, aerial acrobat, urban decoration or urban pest – pigeons play many parts and have many talents that can help or, at least, entertain us.

It can be domesticated, wild or feral. They are now found all over the world but, where are they from originally? In their wild state they are correctly called 'rock doves', and are ‘columbidae’, the group of birds including all pigeons and doves.

The 'rock' in rock dove refers to their choice of habitat. They like cliff faces and rock walls, and this explains why they have been a city bird since cities began. The sides, window ledges and roofs of urban buildings all set close together make a very similar environment to the sort of craggy cliffs they naturally prefer.

They started in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East but their ability to adapt to new environments and a special electro-magnetic navigation system innate to all pigeons make them especially successful long-range explorers (they can find home from anywhere in the world) and, therefore, colonisers. And, it may be this long co-habitation with humans that made them the first bird to be domesticated – even before chickens and ducks. This was in Mesopotamia (Iraq) about five thousand years ago.

Their original use was as food. People probably started by raiding natural pigeon colonies in or near cities, to take young birds or eggs and eat them. However, these early human exploiters of pigeons soon made a number of discoveries about these birds.

They found that if they hatched eggs at their house, the birds would make the place their new home. All a person had to do was build a pigeon loft on the roof with lots of boxes in it, and a pigeon colony would soon grow around the first few birds. The pigeons would never abandon the place of their birth and so escape was not a problem. Furthermore, they found that the pigeon was such a home-body that, if you took it a thousand kilometres or more from its loft, this bird would fly home in a few hours or days and, thanks to its innate compass, almost never lose its way.

This presented many, many interesting possibilities: you could get quite a bit of protein from the meat and eggs without feeding the birds – they fly around finding their own food. It was also a big development in fast, reliable, long-distance communication.

For example, if you took, say, fifty of your pigeons to a town five hundred kilometres away and went home with fifty pigeons from a loft in that town, every time you wanted to send a message there, you would simply tie the same message, in two copies, to the legs of two different pigeons, in case one died on the way. One or both would arrive within a couple of days at most. To reply to your message, the people in the other town would take two of your pigeons from their cage and release them with the return message tied to their legs. As soon as the birds are thrown up into the air, they take off for home at all speed.

They are always male birds and for two reasons. The males are faster and survive longer flights better than the females but, also, pigeons are very monogamous and the males are racing home to be with their 'wives'. Once a year, pigeons would be exchanged again and the communication system continued. There would be nothing to compare with it until the invention of the telegraph, five thousand years later.

This use of two (or more) pigeons as messengers at a time led the owners to guess, just for fun, which pigeon would come home first. In no time at all, people were betting on the result and so the ancient sport of pigeon racing came into existence. Horses are expensive to keep but pigeons are very cheap to feed and house so that pigeon racing is open to anyone, from coal miners to kings. These days, top races offer prizes of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, because of these big rewards, a champion male pigeon can easily cost a hundred thousand dollars or more. The Arabs of the Gulf region are keen pigeon racers and pay the highest prices for winners.

And, the pigeons are not just about racing. Pigeons have now been bred into many colours and types. Some are blue or red with curly feathers at the neck and feet and are just for decoration, looking pretty on the roof or in the garden. There is an 'acrobat' pigeon which, due to a chance genetic mutation, likes to fly very high and then free fall while turning circles. Happily, it always starts to fly up again just before it hits the ground – it's quite spectacular to watch.

However, feral pigeons living in cities have been victims of their own success. Their habit of forming large colonies, especially on big buildings and monuments, means that attractive tourist sites, train stations and statues can become coated in pigeon droppings which are not only ugly but, unfortunately, can sometimes be the cause of serious illness in humans. To take just one example, London has recently banned people from feeding pigeons in the centre; many buildings are now covered in special nets to stop birds landing there; there are teams of municipal workers who shoot these birds with air-rifles; and, falcons and hawks have been introduced to areas overrun by feral pigeons.

Pigeon numbers are now falling in London and other cities that have brought in population control programmes. But, don't worry, the pigeon is in no danger whatsoever of extinction and, while these amazing birds can do so much for us, there will always be room for them on our roofs and in our gardens and streets.