Reader Ed Kroc shows us The Life of Pigeons. I’ve always maintained that we don’t recognize the beauty of these birds only because they’re so common, and because they befoul our cities.
Attached are some photos of probably the most universally recognized example of urban wildlife: pigeons! Not just any pigeons though, these are common Rock Pigeons (Columba livia) that raised a couple of chicks on my balcony this past summer.
Actually, these are the third pair of pigeons that attempted to nest on my balcony this summer. The first couple, staking out their claim in May, seemed rather clueless, laying two eggs in the middle of the balcony, not even next to each other. They rolled around in the breeze and were abandoned after a couple days. Then a different pair arrived in June and built an impressive nest of twigs between two of my flower pots. They laid a single egg, but the very next day a crow spotted them and snatched the egg for lunch. These two then abandoned the site too.
Next came a solitary pigeon. I dubbed him “bachelor pigeon,” as he would sleep alone every night underneath one of the chairs on my balcony. He held this routine for about three weeks before a third pair of pigeons showed up and summarily evicted him from his roost. He tried to reassert his claim for a few days, but was forced to concede after several extended beak-clamping and wrestling matches! This third pair cleverly avoided building a nest by commandeering one of my flower pots that was only half full of foliage. The first attached photo shows one of them in the pot incubating the pair of eggs they laid in mid-July.
After a little more than 2 weeks (a very short incubation period, at least compared to the gulls I usually watch!), the chicks hatched one day apart from each other. They are strange looking things, half-naked, with bills and eye “patches” that are almost adult-sized, but tiny bodies no bigger than their eggs. You can see in the second photo, taken at one-day and less-than-one-day old, that their eyes are not yet open.
One of the parents is seen with the chicks at 3 and 4 days old in the third photo. The membrane that seemed to be covering their eyes upon hatching had just dissolved away, and you can see their pronounced ear-openings.
The fourth photo shows one of the chicks being fed. It always looked like the parents’ exerted considerable effort when feeding, forcibly arching and heaving their bodies forward to expel the crop milk into the chicks’ open mouths
Photo 5 shows the chicks at 6 and 7 days of age, already nearly tripled in size.
The next portrait, taken five days later, shows how the chicks were slowly morphing into something that vaguely resembled an honest rock pigeon. Their newly sprouting feathers gave them a porcupine appearance at this age, with most of their yellow baby-fluff still sticking out in between. Notice too the conspicuous earhole.
Photo 7 shows the chicks at about two and a half weeks old, with most of their outer wing feather grown in. I like this photo because I can see their different personalities in it: the one in the back was suspicious and hostile, rearing up on his/her legs and snapping in my direction whenever I would step out onto the balcony. The one in front never minded me at all.
At almost 4 weeks, the chicks finally jumped out of the flower pot for the very first time. The eighth photo was taken right after the first chick leapt out. I had to leave town for the weekend right after this picture was taken, and when I returned home three days later, the chicks were gone, fledged off the balcony (21 storeys up!) and dispersed out into the city below. They left a horrendous mess for me to clean up, and the tortured remains of a once healthy plant (also pictured in the last photo). Still, it was nice to provide a home for new life!
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Lovely post!
Well documented. The pictures are quite compelling. The young chicks are as ugly as hell.
That is really a great story. It’s Attenborough on the balcony.
Very nice – a great opportunity to follow them closely. Properly speaking they are squabs rather than chicks. And a pigeon post (pardon me!) that does not mention Darwin!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wzswm
Pigeons are beautiful birds. Each spring for a few weeks we’ll have pigeons come to our backyard feeder. Their size and beauty are striking as they strut around on the grass with the other birds.
I think it is only urban concrete and their diet of old french fries that hides their otherwise considerable beauty.
I was shocked when a few years ago, Bill Oddie – perhaps the UK’s most famous bird watcher – made scornful comments about pigeons. I have always thought they were charming birds.
I have never seen baby pigeons before. What great pictures….
This is fascinating. The beaks of the young chicks do seem strangely large.
I was wondering what is the story behind the paired swellings on their beaks. Could they reflect large nasal chambers for an enhanced sense of smell?
Thanks for the pigeon photos Ed! I remember writing on WEIT that I’d never seen a pigeon chick, and you said you had some from the summer. I’m glad you sent them in. They’re not as cute as the gull chicks, but they have character.
Glad you like them! Definitely not as cute as the gull babies, but they were pretty cool to watch grow up.
Wonderful photos–thank you for sharing them, Ed and Jerry!
For what it’s worth, it’s not the pigeon’s fault that it “befouls our cites.” Rock pigeons are native to the mountains and sea cliffs of Europe and Asia (http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migratorybirds/featured_birds/?id=301). It was people who spread them around the world–as food, messengers, etc.–and like other successful invasive species they have adapted beautifully to their new habitats.
A few years ago, I found an injured baby bird in a parking lot and brought it to a wildlife rehabilitation center. After they determined that it was a rock pigeon, they euthanized it. I felt bad at first, but the center’s policy is to rehab only natives species, and I could not fault their way of allocating limited resources and dealing with the problem of invasive species. Pigeons may be nuisances in cities, but we have created far worse problems for our natural habitats by moving plants, animals, and microbes around the world with little understanding of the consequences.
“A few years ago, I found an injured baby bird in a parking lot and brought it to a wildlife rehabilitation center. After they determined that it was a rock pigeon, they euthanized it.”
This surprises me! The rehab centres that I know of here in BC will treat all animals, native or otherwise. I’m a fan of that policy. Yes, so-called invasive species can sometimes flourish at the expense of native species, but it is our fault as a species for introducing them; it seems unethical to me that we would make them pay the price for our species’ collective actions. I can recognize that there are exceptions to this ethic when an introduced species’ presence is catastrophic for native wildlife (like introduced rodents on islands with flightless birds), but I am doubtful that Rock Pigeons or House Sparrows qualify. Introduced species are still wildlife. They reshape the native ecology, but I don’t think that’s axiomatically a bad thing.
I wonder what other people’s thoughts are on this issue?
I suggest reading “Where do Camels Belong” by Ken Thompson, and “The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will be Nature’s Salvation” by Fred Pearce, inter alia!
…. it really depends on the species & where it is. Many flowering plants enhance the environment in the British Isles for example, extending the season for insects & increasing biodiversity. However some are deadly – transported plant diseases, mosquitoes in Hawaii killing birds etc
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~biocomp/hawaii.php
What a great series of photos. Thanks!
That was a really enjoyable story! Thanks. 🙂
A nice bit of natural history, but they’re still sky-rats.