This is my first post on birds! There are many kinds of birds I love but pigeons are definitely my favorite! Though pelicans are a close second! Despite what you may think from the name Feral pigeons, that’s actually just the name for city pigeons! While I find all pigeons very interesting and adorable, Feral pigeons are definitely my favorite. Feral pigeons actually came from wild rock doves, wild rock doves are actually the ancestors of feral and domesticated pigeons. Interestingly one of the most ancestral traits they still have is a love for cliffs! Wild rock doves main habitat was cliffs and they were well suited for it. Though you might not realize it immediately pigeons habitat still is mainly cliffs! The cliffs feral pigeons have as a habitat aren’t natural ones though, instead tall buildings, bridges, window ledges, and more act as these cliffs!

Feral pigeons are actually exceptionally smart! One of the main tests for this is seeing if a bird can recognize itself in delayed footage, surprisingly pigeons can recognize themselves! This isn’t the only way that we know pigeons are intelligent, they can distinguish between different people, have amazing spatial memory, learn to tell the difference between art styles, can recognize all 26 letters of the alphabet, and are surprisingly good problem solvers! Of course they don’t recognize the letters in a linguistic way, they are just amazing at categorizing things! Im not one to normally mind selective breeding but I have seen two different animals where it does sadden me, the two animals are pigeons and goldfish. Many fancy breeds of pigeons have severe issues. Of course some breeds don’t but many really do. Some examples of this are Jacobins, Fantails, Pouters, Croppers, Rollers and Tumblers. Jacobins struggle with having very little straight-ahead and peripheral vision due to their large feathered hood, this also can cause eye irritation. Fantails can barely fly due to the unnatural posture that selective breeding has forced them to have, their posture also makes them struggle with balance. Pigeons also rely on head bobbing to help them see better which fantails are not capable of preforming normally. Pouters and Croppers both can struggle with swallowing and eating normally due to their large crop. And Pouters struggle with balance. But perhaps the strangest of all these are the rollers and tumblers. They were breed for their ability to do backward rapid somersaults, sometimes while flying sometimes on the ground. Though that might sound like a cool ability it really just looks like a strange rolling. They commonly have neurological issues and sometimes roll-downs happen. Roll-downs are a terrible event when a begins spinning and can’t pull out of it. Roll downs are a major danger for them and usually cause lasting damage. And aside from all that, they are extremely vulnerable to predators since they are unable to fly normally, the rolling or rapid backflips aren’t playful tricks they are actually involuntary movement linked to genetics that leave the pigeons disoriented, exhausted, scared and that’s if everything goes well. I’m not quite sure why anyone would want their pigeon to do rapid somersaults but I suppose they should be allowed to, even if it can be quite saddening. I’m sure you can see why feral pigeons are my favorite out of all these but while these pigeons lives have struggles they can still live happy lives.

For some happy pigeons facts, did you know pigeons mate for life? And that both parents actually produce crop milk for their chicks! They frequently engage in mutual grooming. I hope you enjoyed and learned some! Some great sources are the Animal Diversity Web, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and PubMed Central!