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Pigeon Religion: Street Smarts via the Birds

by Pigeon Patrol | Dec 7, 2021 | Columbidae, Doves, history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird

I remember the first time I saw Tina Piña Trachtenburg (aka Mother Pigeon) and her soft-sculptures of pigeons. I was enthusiastically starting work at More Art, a non-profit arts organization producing socially engaged public art exhibitions and educational activism throughout New York City. Walking by Piña Trachtenburg’s flock of stuffed pigeons artfully arranged on the cobblestone pavement of Union Square, was a very apt beginning to working with an organization developing public art and educational programs aimed at facilitating thought provoking responses to social, cultural and environmental concerns. All of the aforementioned issues are playfully addressed in Piña Trachtenburg’s multidisciplinary street art installation (she calls it an ‘outstallation’ due to her work being displayed outdoors). The pigeon is arguably New York City’s official unofficial bird, and the people of New York City generally have a love/hate relationship with these stout-bodied avians. Piña Trachtenburg’s realistically arranged grouping of pigeons seeks to raise awareness and empathy for these oft-misunderstood birds; and makes connections between natural and synthetic materials that shape and envelop our culture. Through her pigeon influenced pedagogy, we can learn about ourselves, our neighbors and the environment at large.

Pigeons taught Piña Trachtenburg about urban ecology. Studying and interacting with them on her Brooklyn rooftop became an experiential learning process. She even developed a bond with the birds she encountered and shared space with every day. This relationship and awareness led to her creating her coterie of soft-sculpture pigeons utilizing locally sourced materials such as recycled clothes for stuffing the bodies, wire for their feed and various colored acrylic fabric to represent their plumage. Her vibrant pigeon sculptures represent the different characteristics of the real pigeons she observes throughout the city. As for why pigeons make great artistic muses, she implores us to “Look at a pigeon the same way that you would look at a rose, or a bed of wild flowers. They are beautiful and unique, with each one being different from the rest. It is a privilege to have them around us.”

Piña Trachtenburg’s statement is similar to Georgia O’Keefe’s reasoning for devoting her aesthetic career to painting flowers, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around, so they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”

One of the habits of mind we employ through art is noticing deeply (see: Educating Through Art), and Piña Trachtenburg’s work is effective for stopping us in our tracks, as well as inspiring our sense of inquiry (another habit of mind). Through performances with her pigeon sculptures, such as musical puppet shows, she communicates uplifting messages about the importance of caring for our surroundings. Her daily actions are documented through her Instagram, where she posts about interactions she has with her fellow humans and pigeons alike. She also discusses issues that affect our urban ecosystems, which include pollution, lack of affordable housing and the need to create safe spaces for all living creatures. Through her online and physical presence, Piña Trachtenburg advocates for us to love and respect our common feathered friends and even the rats, New York City’s other most oft-misunderstood and reviled wildlife species.

Piña Trachtenburg’s interdisciplinary approach of integrating natural and social sciences with the humanities (art, music, spirituality and performance), provides a holistic, down-to-earth perspective for environmental art education. Her multifaceted practice of making public art, performing and educating about ecological issues, highlights the role of art in regards to problem solving and taking action to improve our relationship with our natural surroundings. As a result of viewing and participating in her aesthetic world, we formulate a deeper and more fulfilling understanding of environmental issues that affect our city. We also develop the passion and rationale to make ethical and informed decisions in response to these issues.

In an episode on the podcast Stories Your Granny Never Told, Piña Trachtenburg whimsically describes her practice as a “pigeon religion.” While she was half joking (listen to the podcast episode to learn the context behind this remark), it does feel like she is creating both a sanctuary and doctrine for the moral and compassionate treatment of her feathered friends, and all living things by extension. By forming a humane relationship with pigeons, Piña Trachtenburg has made strides that benefit the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of avian and human alike.

In her recent pandemic-era outstallations, a hand painted sign reads “run for your lives! Humans are spreading disease.” A clear statement that humankind’s actions have direct implications on natural disasters, such as pandemics, which can be linked to our collective contributions to climate change (see: Coronavirus and Climate Change).

Art has a foundational role in spreading awareness and eliciting strong emotional responses around the poignancy of our current ecological crises. Prior works of art like Mel Chins’ Revival Fields (see: Activating Art and Education for Activism) and Michael Wang’s Extinct in New York (see: Back to Nature), stress the importance of protecting and nurturing our natural resources and habitats. They also signify how art and artistic thinking (using the habits of mind) can benefit natural and applied sciences. Piña Trachtenburg’s public facing art is accessible to even larger audiences because she exists in a realm outside of the traditional art or science industries. Her decision to work solely within a heavily trafficked plaza, ensures that people of all walks of life will interact with her eye-catching work.

From the public’s inquiries, discourses and responses to Piña Trachtenburg’s pigeon-centered outstallations, there are reasons for optimism around tangible social, cultural and environmental change. Taking heed of the environmentally conscious messages of ecological artworks might inspire significant emotional responses and further explorations, insights and actions that have positive implications on our relationship to our natural world. It has certainly transformed the moral and ethical choices in my life, especially how I consume and also produce within a materials based art and educational practice. I also have a long-lasting interest in scientific discoveries and research because of art-centered initiatives around natural phenomena, and I would proudly proclaim to be a convert of the pigeon religion.

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Why Are There So Many Pigeons?

by Pigeon Patrol | Nov 30, 2021 | 4-S Gel Bird repellent, Doves, history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control

They peck at the pavement; they coo overhead; they swoop in hundreds across town squares: Pigeons have become such a permanent fixture in our urban landscapes that cities would seem oddly vacant without them.

But while many people harbor resentment for these ubiquitous creatures — labeling them “rats with wings” — few of us stop to ponder how pigeons became so numerous in the first place, and what our own role in their urban colonization might be.

Today, in fact, there are more than 400 million pigeons worldwide, most of which live in cities. But that wasn’t always the case. The city pigeons we know today are actually descended from a wild creature known as the rock dove (Columba livia): As its name suggests, this bird prefers a rocky coastal cliff habitat to the conveniences of city life. [Why Are Chickens So Bad at Flying?]

But going as far back as 10,000 years ago, written and fossil records show that people living in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and Egypt began coaxing these doves with food into human-inhabited areas, encouraging them to roost and breed on their land. “Back then, we brought rock doves into cities to eat as livestock,” Steve Portugal, a comparative ecophysiologist who studies bird flight and behavior, told Live Science. The plump, young birds especially — known as “squabs” — became a prized source of protein and fat. People then began domesticating and breeding the birds for food, creating subspecies that led to the diversity of urban pigeons known today.

Along the way, humans began to realize that pigeons were useful for much more than their meat. As the birds grew more popular in the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe in the ensuing centuries, people began to tap into their innate talent for navigation — the same skill that makes homing pigeons famous today. Ancient records show that Mediterranean sailors used the birds to point floundering ships toward land. In cities, they became increasingly valuable as airborne messengers that could deliver important information across large distances.

From there, humanity’s appreciation for the animals only grew: Although pigeons were initially domesticated as a food source, “as other poultry became more popular, pigeons fell out of favor for eating and people began breeding them as a hobby,” said Elizabeth Carlen, a doctoral student at Fordham University in New York City who studies the evolution of urban pigeons.

By the 1600s, rock doves — non-native to the United States — had reached North America, transported by ships in the thousands. Rather than being a food source, it’s most likely that the birds were brought across from Europe to satiate the growing pigeon-breeding trend among hobbyists, said Michael Habib, a paleontologist in the Dinosaur Institute at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, and the University of Southern California.

Inevitably, birds escaped captivity, and began to breed freely in American cities. “We created this novel [urban] habitat and then we basically engineered an animal that does very well in that novel habitat,” Habib told Live Science. “They were successful in cities because we engineered them to be comfortable living around humans.” [Do Birds Really Abandon Their Chicks If Humans Touch Them?]

Cities became the perfect backdrop for the pioneering pigeons’ success. “Pigeons are naturally cliff-dwellers and tall buildings do a pretty great job at mimicking cliffs,” Carlen told Live Science. “Ornate facing, window sills and air-conditioning units provide fantastic perches for pigeons, similar to the crevices found on the side of a cliff.”

Another trait that makes pigeons more adaptable is their appetite. While other bird species have to rely on supplies of berries, seeds and insects, pigeons can eat just about anything that humans toss in the trash. “Other species are specialists and pigeons are the ultimate generalists,” Portugal said. “And the food is endless: I don’t think too many pigeons go to bed hungry!”

The pigeon’s unusual breeding biology seals the deal: Both parents rear their chicks on a diet of special protein- and fat-rich milk produced in a throat pouch called the crop. So, instead of having to rely on insects, worms and seeds to keep their young alive — resources that would be scarcer in cities — pigeons can provide for their offspring no matter what, Portugal says: “As long as the adults can eat, they can feed their babies, too.”

All these traits give pigeons a competitive edge compared with other species that might attempt survival in cities. Combined with the pigeon’s prolific breeding habits (parents can produce up to 10 chicks a year), it’s easy to see why these birds have become so populous around the world.

Not everyone appreciates the urban phenomenon that these birds have become — hence the “rat with wings” moniker. That’s understandable to some extent: Pigeons can spread diseases, and the mounds of guano they splatter across buildings can be cumbersome and costly to clean.

Despite this, Portugal sees a benefit to their presence in our urban environments. “They’re actually one of the few bits of wildlife that people get to interact with in cities now,” he said. What’s more, “they’re super-adaptable and super-successful; they’re the ultimate survivors. Actually, we can learn a lot from them.”

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Pigeon ‘backpacks’ track flock voting

by Pigeon Patrol | Nov 23, 2021 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves

(PhysOrg.com) — Pigeon flocks are guided by a flexible system of leadership in which almost every member gets a ‘vote’ but the votes of high-ranking birds carry more weight, a new study has shown.

Scientists used GPS ‘backpacks’ to record the flight paths of individual pigeons and then analysed interactions between the birds. Their findings could help us understand the collective behaviour of other animals, including humans.

A report of the research, carried out by scientists from Oxford University and Eötvös University, Hungary, is published in this week’s Nature.

‘We are all aware of the amazing aerobatics performed by flocks of birds but how such flocks decide where to go and whether decisions are made by a dominant leader or by the group as a whole has always been a mystery,’ said Dr Dora Biro of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, an author of the paper. ‘We found that, whilst most birds have a say in decision-making, a flexible system of ‘rank’ ensures that some birds are more likely to lead and others to follow.’

As part of the study, miniature GPS loggers weighing just 16g were fitted into custom-made backpacks carried by flocks of up to 10 homing pigeons. These enabled scientists to, for the first time, explore spatial and temporal relationships between individual birds and the movement decisions they made at the scale of a fraction of a second.

The team measured shifts in the flight direction of each bird every 0.2 seconds and tried to ‘line up’ these changes across different birds in the flock to determine who initiated any given change in direction and who followed (and with what time delay). The research revealed unexpectedly well-defined hierarchies within flocks, with a spectrum of different levels of leadership which in turn determined the influence individuals had on other birds and on the flock as a whole.

‘Crucially, these hierarchies are flexible in the sense that the leading role of any given bird can vary over time, while nonetheless remaining predictable in the long run,’ Dr Biro said. ‘This dynamic, flexible segregation of individuals into leaders and followers – where even the lower-ranking members’ opinions can make a contribution – may represent a particularly efficient form of decision-making.’

‘Whether such effects come from some individuals being more motivated to lead or being inherently better navigators, perhaps with greater navigational knowledge, is an intriguing question we don’t yet have an answer to.’

The team also discovered that a bird’s position in the flock matched its position in the hierarchy, with individuals nearer the front more likely to be responsible for decisions. Additionally, they found that followers responded more quickly to those flying on their left, confirming observations in the laboratory that suggest birds process social information – such as tracking and responding to the movements of other birds – predominantly through input that the brain receives from the left eye.

The researchers believe their findings could help unravel the decision-making process in many other groups of animals. Further studies may reveal how such a sophisticated leadership strategy confers evolutionary advantage on individuals over a strategy based on a single leader or one in which all members contribute equally to decision-making.

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Wartime hero pigeon Paddy honoured with fly-past

by Pigeon Patrol | Nov 23, 2021 | Columbidae, Doves, history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird

One of Northern Ireland’s smallest World War II heroes has been honoured.

Paddy, a messenger pigeon who served with the RAF during the Normandy operations in June 1944, was remembered in his home town of Larne on Friday.

PDSA, Britain’s biggest veterinary charity, awarded Paddy the Dickin Medal, dubbed the animals’ “Victoria Cross”, 65 years ago this month.

He received it for being the fastest pigeon to reach England with a coded message from the battle-front beaches of Normandy.

The brave bird brought back vital information about the Allies’ progress, flying 230 miles in four hours 50 minutes – the fastest time of any of the messenger pigeons involved in the mission with an average speed of 56mph.

PDSA spokesman James Puxty said: “Paddy’s contribution to the D-Day operations was a credit to the thousands of messenger pigeons donated by the racing pigeon fraternity for service during World War II.

“He was one of 32 brave, feathered heroes that received the PDSA Dickin Medal for their life-saving flights during the war, and the only recipient from Northern Ireland.”

Local hero

Paddy was born and raised in Carnlough and joined thousands of other racing birds who were trained and drafted to RAF Hurn in Hampshire for military service.

Impressing military brass with his flying in the Air-Sea rescue units he was seconded to the United States First Army for undercover missions during the Normandy Landings.

In the face of poor weather conditions and the threat of German falcons, deployed to intercept Paddy and his comrades, he delivered his message to his home loft at RAF Hurn.

After the war Paddy returned to Carnlough and lived out his days with his owner Captain Andrew Hughes, until his death in 1954.

A memorial to the winged hero was erected in Carnlough harbour.

A feathered fly-past of pigeons formed part of the Paddy Memorial Day event held at Larne Museum and Arts Centre.

Larne Borough Council and the town’s historical society were joined by guests from PDSA and the owner of Paddy’s PDSA Dickin Medal, former Irish Army officer Kevin Spring.

Younger guests were entertained by Gail Seekamp, the children’s author, who read from her book “Paddy the Pigeon”.

The Dickin Medal was introduced in 1943 by Maria Dickin, PDSA’s founder. She wanted to recognise the gallantry and devotion to duty of animals serving with the Armed Forces and Civil Defence units during WWII.

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Airborne pigeons obey the pecking order

by Pigeon Patrol | Nov 16, 2021 | Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves, history of pigeons, MBCA

During flight, pigeons in a flock follow the leader.

Pigeons wearing miniature backpacks containing tracking devices have revealed that the birds rapidly shift direction during flight in response to cues from the leading members of their group.

“It is the first study demonstrating hierarchical decision-making in a group of free-flying birds,” says Tamás Vicsek, a biophysicist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest who led the study, which is published today in Nature¹.

The discovery became possible only recently with the introduction of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that can collect data at a high rate: five times per second. Vicsek’s team strapped lightweight GPS devices to individual pigeons and tracked flocks of up to 10 birds during free flights lasting around 12 minutes and 15-kilometre homing flights. In total, the GPS logged 32 hours of data and captured 15 group flights. The researchers couldn’t pinpoint individuals’ exact positions within a flock, but were able to accurately compare birds’ directions of motion.

Within flocks, the authors looked first at the behaviour of pairs of birds. For each possible pairing, the team identified a leader — the bird that changed direction first — and a follower, which copied the leader’s motion. Followers reacted very quickly, within a fraction of a second.

Next, the scientists constructed a network of relationships among birds in the group during each flight. They uncovered a robust pecking order: birds higher up the ranks had more influence over the group’s movements, and each individual’s level of influence was consistent across specific free and homing flights.

However, this influence was not always consistent between flights, with some rearrangement occurring among birds at the head of the flock. Vicsek speculates that this may have occurred because an original leader had tired. Co-author Dora Biro, an animal behaviour expert at the University of Oxford, UK, says, “This kind of group decision-making is more complicated than previous models suggested.”

Follow the leader

Although pigeons have an almost 340º field of view, the researchers found that the birds at the front of a flock tended to make the navigational decisions. Moreover, birds responded more readily to a leader’s movements if the leader was on their left side. These findings concur with previous work that indicated that social cues entering a bird’s left eye receive preferential processing in the brain².

“No other study has contributed more to our understanding of collective decision-making in actively homing animals, not by a long shot,” says Todd Dennis, an expert in pigeon navigation at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He likens the birds’ group behaviour to that of a cabaret dance troupe, in which less-experienced dancers towards the rear correct themselves by watching experts at the front. “The study provides a very important model for how collective behaviour and leadership can be assessed in a range of animal groups,” he says.

The authors say that a hierarchical arrangement may foster more flexible and efficient decision-making compared with that of singly led or egalitarian groups. In future studies, the scientists plan to investigate whether leaders are better navigators, and whether hierarchies persist in larger groups and in other types of social animal. “If it’s true that there’s an evolutionary advantage to making decisions in this way, then there’s absolutely a reason to assume that it could have evolved in other species too,” Biro says.

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What Makes the Passenger Pigeon Different From All Other Pigeons

by Pigeon Patrol | Nov 16, 2021 | Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves, history of pigeons

Not a Carrier Pigeon, Not a Messenger Pigeon, Not a Rock Pigeon
The passenger pigeon and the rock dove (Columba livia, aka rock pigeon, carrier pigeon, etc) are often confused in the public’s mind but they are not closely related. The dock dove is a Eurasian species that has been semi-domesticated for centuries and has been introduced into North America. They like to nest on ledges, which is one reason they have proliferated in cities around the world in a feral state.

Passenger Pigeons Were Unlike Any Other Bird in the World
in at Least Three Important Ways
The Passenger Pigeon was a bird solely of North America, with the vast majority inhabiting a region from the Gulf States to Hudson’s Bay, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the upper Missouri River. Three things made them unique in all the world:
1) they were the most abundant bird of the continent, if not the world: no one knows for sure how many there were but the most careful figure offered ranges from a low of three billion to a high of five billion individuals;
2) they aggregated in numbers that darkened the sky for as much as three days: individual flights might have exceeded two billion birds; and
3) in literally decades, human actions reduced this incredible bounty to zero, when on September 1, 1914, the last of the species died. Given that it is extinct, very little was known about its relationships to other birds until recently.

Where Passenger Pigeons Belong in the Tree of Life
Scientists divide the vast array of life forms into categories based on the similarities and relationships between organisms. From broadest to narrowest, these categories are Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, species. All the birds of the world are in the Phylum Chordata, Kindom Animalia, Class Aves and then are divided into 26 orders. (based on the taxonomy of James Clements). These orders include the Falconiformes (hawks), Anseriformes (ducks and geese mostly), Strigiformes (owls), and Passeriformes (the largest order of all which includes the perching birds like warblers, swallows, flycatchers, finches, thrushes, and sparrows).

All pigeons are members of the order Columbiformes which have a number of characteristics that together set them apart from other birds. These include a bilobed crop that produces a sort of “milk” that is fed to the chicks (“crop” is a pocket like space near the throat); monogamous mating behavior; the ability to drink by sucking or pumping; and thick feathers set close to the skin. On a general level, pigeons possess stocky bodies with small heads, bills, and feet. (Passenger pigeons were among the sleekest of pigeons). There are 42 genera and 308 recognized species of Columbiformes.

Pigeons of the World: From 8 Pounds to 22 Grams
There is no difference between pigeons and doves: the terms are interchangeable. Pigeons are found throughout the world. Some pigeon species eat mostly fruit, whereas others forage on seeds. The fruit-eating Columbiformes tend to be much more vividly colored than the seed eating ones. The largest species is the Victoria crowned pigeon (Goura victoria) of New Guinea which approaches the size of a turkey and can weigh in excess of 8 pounds. The smallest species are members of the ground dove genus (Columbina): they can be as small as house sparrows and weigh not more than 22 grams.

Until recently, the relationship of Passenger Pigeon with respect to other pigeon species has been simply speculation based on gross plumage characteristics. However, recent genetic data published in 2010 by Johnson and colleagues (Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 57:455) show that, despite the gross similarity in appearance to mourning doves and its relatives (the genus Zenaida), the Passenger Pigeon is not closely related to this group of pigeons at all. In fact, its closest relatives are a group of large-bodied pigeons from the New World in the genus Patagioenas, which includes the western Band-tailed Pigeon among others. Even so, scientists believe that Passenger Pigeon is still different enough from other extant pigeons to remain in its unique genus, Ectopistes. Based on an analysis of the evolutionary tree constructed from genetic data, Johnson and colleagues (2010) hypothesized that eons ago an Asian cuckoo dove crossed into North America and provided the ancestor to both Ectopistes and Patagioenas.

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Pigeon Religion: Street Smarts via the Birds

Why Are There So Many Pigeons?

Pigeon ‘backpacks’ track flock voting

Wartime hero pigeon Paddy honoured with fly-past

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Airborne pigeons obey the pecking order

What Makes the Passenger Pigeon Different From All Other Pigeons

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