PIGEONS KNOW NO BOUNDARIES
Rex Burress
There was a video showing the renowned Taj Mahal in India with the perfect pool reflection, and across the screen flew a familiar sight--city pigeons stealing the show!
City pigeons, alias Rock Pigeon, alias Rock Dove, alias Columba livia, show up in every major, and even minor, city in the world. They infiltrate the crannies of downtown Oroville, CA, and occupy roosts under the nearby Green Bridge. They infuse Oakland, CA, and flock to the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge, where park visitors entice them with sacks of bread. Their clapping-takeoff flight echoes along the railroad grain silo stacks at Trenton, MO, and they are seen at Encanto Park in Phoenix. Like other European imports such as English Sparrows and Starlings, Pigeons are fully compatible with human society and are found in practically every citified part of the earth.
Pigeons were domesticated in the early Asian civilization, and from that 5,000 B.C. culture, millions have been infused throughout the world —about 28 million in Europe alone--but wild species were present 300,000-years-ago according to fossils. Presently, there are 310 species of Columbidae-family pigeon and dove species worldwide. Around Oroville, we also have native mourning doves and band-tailed pigeons, as well as the domesticated pigeon introduction.
One of the most startling American pigeon stories harks back to the Passenger Pigeon of the 1870's when migrating masses, hundreds of millions in size, extended for miles and was the most abundant bird in the world. Disrespect for their existence led to their unthinkable extinction, and by 1914 the last one died in a zoo. Of the same era, another pigeon species--the Dodo of South Pacific islands--became extinct.
Considering the flimsy nests the dove family builds, it's a wonder any survive. The mourning dove especially, just puts together a few sticks on a limb to hold the two white eggs. At Gray Lodge Refuge, managers help out by offering a wire cone for stabilization, and the lazy-like doves use it. Pigeons are not much better, although I did once see a nest made of numerous wire fragments the birds had collected around a construction site.
Aside from their strong flight, pigeons suck water in a continuous flow rather than the dip-and-lift method of most birds. Also the babies are fed a regurgitated “milk” from the parent's stomachs, which reminds me of a rookie director at the Oakland Nature Center forcing minced mice down squab's mouths one time when she thought the “rescued” pigeon babies were hawks!
More people than you might imagine, in spite of pigeon abundance, can't tell a pigeon from an albatross, which I found out while working at the Center. A call came from the other side of the lake: “Hurry! An albatross is walking around our parking lot!” That was after our Center staff fed two, off-course Laysan Albatross until I took them out to sea via the coast guard, and lifted them to the wind. Those two drifted back to Oakland, probably fond of our fish handout, and finally we got a Matson liner to take them back to Hawaii. There was a rash of calls by people reporting albatross that turned out to be pigeons.
Doves have a very rapid, darting flight, prone to suddenly dip, similar to “roller” pigeons. The flight challenge has made mourning doves popular with sportsmen during hunting season. They are edible, like quail, but not much meat is involved. Pigeons had made it to our farm barn in Missouri where I stalked them in the rafters with my B-B gun, and Mother made “pigeon pie!”
'The Passenger Pigeon was a biological storm. He was the lightning that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the air. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a traveling blast of life.” --Aldo Leopold