The rock dove, aka the rock pigeon, the common pigeon, the dove, winged rats, etc etc, this is a feral domestic animal found all around the globe – especially around humans.  They’re on the “life list” of birds I’ve seen, and they’re on yours too.  Along with Canada geese, they’re the biggest purveyors of bird feces where you don’t want them to be, in much of the USA.  But still, they’re ours -we made them- and I do like them an awful lot.

Pigeons are a cool group of birds.  Different species are found all over the world, and it’s surprising to me what they have in common.  Some diverse far-flung groups of birds like woodpeckers have more variety in proportion and shape than pigeons do.  For some reason, doves all have that broad powerful chest, stretchy neck that narrows at the top, and a lil’ head with pigeon beak.  How do I describe that beak?  You know what it looks like, and it looks the same from ivory-colored desert beauty on one side of the planet to upside-down parrot-colored jungle freak on the other.  Dodos were the one outlier in that beak shape.  I know the cloning projects have been scams and bullshit, but I’d love to see it happen.

In my neighborhood there are only two species of pigeon that I know of:  the one this article is about, and invasive Eurasian collared doves.  I do like the invaders, as rarely as I see them, but this article is not their time.

Domestic doves are known for coating the cities of the world in guano.  At one time in the Middle East, silo-shaped dovecotes had chutes designed to spill fertilizer into fields of crops.  Smart.  Now people remember after the fact that anything humans can build, pigeons can perch on, and they have to cover unintended landing strips in bird spikes.  I heard anarchist cockatoos in Oz are tearing up that hostile architecture; good job.

Lingering traces of domestication syndrome haunt the gene pool of these animals, some over a thousand generations removed from active human care.  You see it in their lack of fear around humans, of course, but also in their mottled colors.  Many have reverted to natural enough color schemes, like if feral domestic cats had achieved higher rates of brown tabby in their numbers, but many pigeons are missing a category of pigment, or gone leucistic or piebald or polka-dotted.  I like the natural colors, but the mutants can be very pretty.

The first place pigeons became important in my life was as supporting actors in John Woo movies.  Some other random experiences:  Seeing them puffed up to the size of bowling balls, trying to hunker down for the freezing weather in the International District bus tunnel.  Seeing their fucked up malformed feet, and seeing an article on the subject just as my curiosity about it was reaching its peak.  Seeing a baby pigeon ganked by crows on Mother’s Day.  Seeing baby pigeons close up for the first time, in a nest at the Federal Way Transit Center.

I’ve wanted to have a pet bird I could easily snuggle with, and if I ever get over the annoyance of cleaning the cage etc, pigeons are on my list.  They’re domestic animals so would feel less nervy about it than 99% of parrots, and they’re less scratchy / bitey than chickens.  I wouldn’t even get a fancy pigeon.  Plain ol’ winged rat is good enough for me.  I would hold it under my arm like a football and get gross stains on all my clothes.  Worth it?

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