A fine mess
Rethinking our relationship with the common pigeon
On a blue sky day, hot but not unbearable, you leave your downtown office to take advantage of the fresh air. At a nearby park, you’re delighted to find a vacant bench in the shade of a tree. Reaching into your insulated bag for the lunch you packed this morning, your face relaxes as a breeze pays a visit to the back of your neck. You’re feeling the lift of getting away from your desk, of saving money, and prioritizing your health when – splrrtt!
You’d not given a moment’s thought to the already familiar sound, the cooing so much a part of your daily experience, but now you notice the bird perched on the branch just overhead. Stout and gray, or white, or brown, with onyx eyes and flashes of iridescence above prehistoric red feet, it is nothing other than your favorite hateable bird, the much maligned feral pigeon.
Spend time in any city, and you’ll notice them flocking to food scraps on sidewalks, gathering in parks, congregating on ledges, and looping in loosely formed groups overhead. They are everywhere people are, on every continent except Antarctica, and especially populous in urban areas.
There are more than 300 pigeon species and roughly 300 million birds alive this very minute. And they are worth noticing. Not all 300 million at once, of course, but the ones we’re most apt to forget: Columba livia domestica.
This bird is a mishmash, a mongrel, a combination of its wild ancestor, the rock dove, and any number of birds that were intentionally captured, tamed, prized, and hybridized. Except in remote regions of Ireland and Scotland, the OG pigeons are gone, supplanted by DNA descendants that got their start 2,000 to 10,000 years ago, a notable range. Bird bones and ancient history both being delicate and difficult to preserve, no one knows for sure when early civilizations first recognized the utility of these creatures and launched the slow arc of their domestication. But the birds responded better than anyone could have imagined.
Maybe it started as folly, a hobby, some food here, a dovecote there, no more surprising than what we might provide for our backyard songbirds. Or maybe the wild doves started following us, as grain farming took hold and made for easy foraging. And maybe our buildings proved a surprisingly suitable substitute for their cliff-dwelling instincts, and the birds figured they might as well take advantage of us. Eventually, whatever conditions arose to bring them into permanent association with humans, we did what we do with most of our natural resources: We turned them into a commodity.
The birds continued coexisting with humans as they had for thousands of years, and they did it without much resentment until 1966.
We appreciated their innate homing instincts, valued them for helping us fertilize our crops, and exploited their adaptability. We hunted them, raced them, bred them, sold them, called them into service as military messengers and spies. We brought them with us to new continents, released them, lost them, and abandoned them.
But mostly, we ate them. As late as 1944, it is estimated that processing plants in the U.S. were cranking out as many as one hundred thousand pigeons a year.
Then, after decades of usefulness, they became obsolete. We stopped raising our own poultry, turning instead to standard-issue chickens. With the emergence of modern communication, we no longer needed them as flying messengers. The birds went right on coexisting with humans as they had for thousands of years, and they did it without much resentment, until 1966.
That’s when Thomas P. Hoving, New York City’s parks commissioner, gave an impassioned speech aimed at curbing the vandalism and vagrancy in Bryant Park at the time. Drawing a baseless connection, Hoving simultaneously denigrated the pigeon, calling it, tragically, a “rat with wings.” The term stuck, marking a turning point in public perception.
Why does this history matter? Because the pigeon that pestered you in the courtyard, stood on your statue, and splattered your lunch has something to teach you.
Let’s take a look at what’s good and true about these sturdy birds.
They’re smart:
Pigeons are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. Studies show that they solve problems in a manner similar to artificial intelligence, that they can distinguish human features, can be taught complex action-response sequences, and can remember hundreds of images for several years at a time. They can count and recognize words. They can even distinguish Cubist paintings from Impressionist. Pigeon day at the MET, anyone?
They’re loyal:
Unlike many of us, pigeons mate for life and raise their young cooperatively. They create strong bonds with human companions. Charles Darwin was a fancier and Nikola Tesla was fairly smitten.
They have amazing senses of direction:
That homing instinct of theirs is no joke, even though we don’t really know how it works. Some pigeons have found their way home from more than 1,000 miles away, even when transported without sight, smell, or magnetic clues. Heck, I can barely find my way back to the car I left in a parking lot 10 minutes ago.
They’ve saved lives:
Okay, maybe this one isn’t attributable to the average city pigeon, but it sure can’t be said of the bald eagle. So, there’s that.
The point I’m making is that even if you’re not ready to love them, you can’t, in good conscience, label them as purposeless birdbrains.
Despite all the people I know who live in cities with pigeons, I’ve never known anyone to contract a disease that way.
What’s that you say? It’s not lack of intelligence that bothers you, but lack of cleanliness? A reasonable concern. Are they dirty sky rodents? Do they spread disease? Or is it, as I often contend when it comes to our negative impressions of many things, that we see what we believe we’ll see?
I’m not an epidemiologist nor an avian specialist, but there is information aplenty to refute the idea that pigeons make us sick. I’m taking the citizen scientist approach here. Think of me as an anecdotal expert.
While pigeons aren’t the tidiest critters I’ve ever encountered, trust me when I tell you that four-legged mammals are worse. Granted pigs cannot, in fact, fly, and cows don’t live in cities, but they are also a lot bigger. My research suggests that a pigeon produces approximately 25 pounds of poop in a year, a cow, at an average of 65 pounds a day, makes roughly 12 tons.
Despite them living in pigeony places, I’ve never known anyone to contract a disease from exposure. On the other hand, I’ve known quite a few people who developed bacterial infections from eating mass-produced meat and countless who picked up illnesses from other humans or from their pets.
Municipalities bemoan the clean-up costs associated with the feces of feral pigeons, but there is little apparent consideration for what the birds offer to the socio-environmental equation. Their unflappable friendliness can be bothersome, but they do add a quality of space and freedom to our built landscapes. And anyway, have you ever wondered where the discarded remains of billions of street tacos and hot dogs would go if we didn’t have pigeons serving as winged janitors? Without them, would rat and cockroach populations rise from the boost in food sources?
Mmmm. Rats and roaches. More creatures we’d just as soon eradicate. Should we add mosquitoes while we’re at it? Ticks? American bullfrogs? House sparrows? European starlings? Seagulls? It’s looking like this might be about something more than just poop.
Humans, as a collective, have lived too long in opposition to nature, giving ourselves the right to leverage and control whatever it is we deem worthy or unworthy. When we consider the utility of something, the results are predicated on the assumption that the best and highest user is us.
Go home, hubris. You’re drunk.
Fewer than 80 years after its discovery by the Dutch, the Dodo bird (a distant pigeon relative) went extinct as a result of overhunting, habitat loss, and introduced species. Similarly, the Passenger Pigeon, once so abundant that a migrating flock was said to have blocked the sun for three consecutive days, was utterly wiped out 100 years ago.
There may yet be hope for our feral, feathered friends.
As a rule, we don’t like being held accountable for the transgressions of our ancestors, and we have, arguably, many more consequential opportunities toward which we could direct similar energies if we wanted to go there. Nevertheless, we can’t escape the reality that feral pigeons are our responsibility. We created the mess we’re in.
Sadly, despite all the years we’ve had to learn from similar mistakes, we mostly haven’t. When facing a biological mishap of our own making, responses continue to target specific interventions with little consideration for the systems perpetuating the problems. Too many pigeons? Poison them, relocate them, exclude them, feed them birth control (programs all currently in use around the globe), but could we not also promote conversations that address our glaring misconceptions, examine our tendency to marginalize certain groups, or ask that we revisit our impulse to control nature in the first place?
Some are, and it restores my optimism. As more of us train ourselves to think like an ecosystem, acknowledging that every action has rippling environmental impacts, there may yet be hope for our feral friends.
Last spring, the newly renamed London Museum revealed its redesigned logo, a white, clay pigeon accompanied by a properly positioned, glittering gold poop splat. Their website offers this explanation: “The pigeon and splat speak to a historic place full of dualities, a place where the grit and the glitter have existed side by side for millennia. We share our city with others, including millions of animals.”
Meanwhile, now and through spring of 2026, at The High Line park in downtown Manhattan, a 16-foot, hand painted, cast aluminum pigeon looms above the intersection of 10th Avenue and West 30th Street. Visible from blocks away or from close enough to commune with its colossal feet, the sculpture’s title is Dinosaur. Forty-two year old, Colombian born artist, Iván Argote, notes, “The name Dinosaur makes reference to the sculpture’s scale and to the pigeon’s ancestors who millions of years ago dominated the globe, as we humans do today… the name also serves as a reference to the dinosaur’s extinction. Like them, one day we won’t be around anymore, but perhaps a remnant of humanity will live on—as pigeons do—in the dark corners and gaps of future worlds.”
Is it possible that the pigeon pendulum has begun to swing back in the direction from whence it came? Can you imagine what could happen if it did?
~Elizabeth
I am so glad you’ve stopped by. Hey, let’s grab a spot in the comments together and have a chat. Do you have a pigeon story you’d like to share? Maybe birds terrify you, and you’re still catching your breath. I’d love to learn more.
If you missed it earlier, you might enjoy my personal pigeon story, One and Counting.
This year, as all previous, my writing at Chicken Scratch remains free to everyone, a gift I can offer to those who discover it. Even so, I have a cadre of supporters who choose to lift up the work with paid subscriptions and one-time donations. (Special thanks, this week, to Margaret, Lin, Don, and Stewart.)
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Additional sources used in the creation of this essay include:
'Dim-witted' pigeons use the same principles as AI to solve tasks
A Tale of Three Superdoves: the Dodo, the Rock Pigeon, and the Passenger Pigeon
Your stats on cow poo seem a little high but hard to prove. (I’ve lived on farms over the years and yes, there’s plenty of splats but seems incredible to think that much per cow per day.) And as a rural person, I love pigeons. Their coos give me great joy. Definitely not a lot around in my part of the world, although I know they cause fascinating graffiti in cities. Nice story. Thanks.
I enjoy the cluck and coo of pigeons. Years ago n Florence, while waiting in line outside the Uffizi one unseasonably cold afternoon, I watched a one-legged pigeon hop up and down to the shared delight of us all. No doubt the bird was hoping for crumbs, yet it seemed aware of its power to charm. I felt we were all in conversation, the pigeon and the people who spoke many languages. I’ve forgotten what I saw at the Uffizi, but not that saucy pigeon.