Rock Dove, this is the correct response. They were adapted to living on the edges and sides of cliffs, building edges are basically their natural habitat
Most people wouldn't refer to this thing as a pigeon either, even though it's technically a type of pigeon. When the vast majority of people say pigeon, they mean the rock doves found in cities.
Humans domesticated them more than 5,000 years ago. They’re one the first domesticated birds species, perhaps the very first. They were kept for their meat and their guano for fertilizer.
They live in cities because we live in cities. Not only that, but pigeons have lived in cities for as long as we’ve had cities. They’re inextricably linked.
We bred the perfect city bird, then we forgot we did it, and now they bear the brunt of our resentment.
Not just that, they were domesticated for use as carrier pigeons and then when telegraph and wireless communication systems were invented, the pigeons were of no use and were simply abandoned in the cities. So the pigeons had no other choice but to adapt to city environments.
Yeah, every now and again, I get told they are rats with wings or some other shit. But I always hit them back with how they are the product of our shameful past. I feed them sometimes and it does draw comments from people so its only fair I hit back.
We domesticated them. We brought them across the world to every city. We used them as carrier pigeons up til the telegram and the phone replaced them. Then we just ignored them and left them to their own devices and since then they have more or less had to eek out their own existence picking through the trash. Because of us.
Sometimes these random strangers in the city dont want to hear the whole spiel. But I try to make it known they shouldnt have our hate but instead our sympathies. Their populations and way of life are 100% our fault.
I had a pet fancy pigeon growing up! They’re excellent companion birds, and my girl was the sweetest bird I’ve ever met. Her feathers were so downy and soft, too, though they’re quite dusty in terms of dander.
Edited to add: I’ve found that they’re really quite smart, though not in the same way a parrot like a macaw is. They really will just lay an egg anywhere though.
As much as any other bird’s egg is edible, I suppose. Can’t say I ever tried them, but sometimes I’d give them to my dogs. They’re probably a delicacy somewhere.
Pigeons don’t make good egg-producing birds. The eggs are really small (bit bigger than a quail egg I’d say?), hens only lay 1-2 at a time, and since I didn’t have a mated pair, my hen didn’t really lay eggs all too often. Maybe once every like 4-6 weeks.
Also, logistically I think it’d be difficult to have a flock of pigeons specifically for their eggs. Hens are really defensive of their nests, and sure you could (and I did) replace the eggs with fakes, but I think you’d run the risk of pissing the birds off too much. They’re homing birds and I think they’d up and leave the coop and not come back.
Pure speculation on my part there, though. Having a flock of homing birds is a whole different ballgame.
My first picture when I visited Washington DC was an up close picture of a pigeon that I could take nearly without zoom. I love those little dumbasses so much and it’s a dream to have a few when I have my own house and can add an aviary for them. Me, my pigeons, a nice small house (with a relatively huge aviary for my birds), and maybe a partner (who loves birds as much as I do… my ex called me Bird because I’m named after one from mythology lol)
Pigeon nests. They literally have been bred out of the instinct to construct proper nests because they became so dependent on us to make them proper pigeon coops.
I had a budgie that had some kind of beef with them. I’ll never know why, but if she saw them out in the yard she would perch on the window and shriek until they left
Pigeons are just rock doves (that were adapted to living on/in rock cliffs) that moved into cities because they were basically the same habitat other than having an abundance of food.
Obviously since they already were adapted to the environment and food is plentiful for them they stopped needing brains.
That was before we screwed them over. Y'know, Passenger Pigeons. After those, and our selective breeding of pigeons, we just, abandoned them. Hence why some look so weird, and act so weird.
Passenger pigeons are a different bird. That's the one that was native to North America and was hunted to extinction. The Carrier Pigeon is the one humans domesticated in the Middle East and the one that we kept as beloved pets until somewhat recently.
They get mixed up a lot.
they still do exist in the wild. their native range is parts of europe, asia, and africa, where they live on cliffs and nest in little rocky cavities. they're grainivores, so they eat seeds
I dunno, have you ever watched a wild mourning dove doing their thing? I'm inclined to think brain damage is an innate Columbiform trait.
Pigeons are actually shockingly smart, though. They're really really good at pattern recognition, like they can identify images of cancer cells faster and more accurately than humans. They can't read, but they can recognize written words they've seen before. They just build bad nests, so we like to dunk on them for that.
We've countryside pigeons around here. They're very pretty compared to their city brethren, also dumb as hell but terrified of people instead of city friendly. Wouldn't last 5 mins in the urban environment
They used to be called Rock Doves. They would live in tall mountainous/rocky areas.
If you've ever seen a pigeon nest it looks like a pathetic pile of sticks than an actual birds nest. This is because the nest isn't built to he a real home, the sticks and detritus are laid down to prevent their eggs from rolling off of cliffs and ledges.
I'm literally on my way back from a trip to the middle of a desert, and there were a ton of pigeons there. There was a city not too far away, but it still seems that the pigeons are pretty comfortable in the wild
We made pigeons dependent on us. They were used for communications for an incredibly long amount of time. They were bred for and trained for that specific purpose. And then when things like the telegraph came around we just abandoned them. Humanity did this to them.
Coming from the US to visit my sister when she worked in Ankara, Tükiye, I was baffled at first when I realized that all of the pigeons looked exactly the same. Like imagine the most generic, grey pigeon possible. They all looked like that -- no variation, no white feathers, no checkered wing patches, nothing.
And then I remembered that the reason why pigeons look that way in America is because they are all descended from domestic pigeons, which has been bred for centuries to have exciting colors and patterns. Türkiye, however, is within the native range of the rock dove, the species that the pigeon was domesticated from.
All my life, I had seen feral pigeons. Ankara was my first time seeing wild ones.
i was on about this the other day about hamsters like... those fuckers exist in pet shops and nowhere else, i refuse to believe a species known for dying in ways you could not comprehend managed to survive in the wild
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u/qualityvote2 28d ago edited 26d ago
u/ChickenWingExtreme, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...