I had only had my new car for one week when a pigeon pooped all over it. My friend said, “Well, that’s what you get for parking under pigeons.” I explained that my car is parked next to a building that has a lot of pigeons on and around it, but it’s not parked directly under something (power lines, tree branches, ledges, etc) from where a pigeon could sit a drop poo. He replied that the car must be under something and I’m just not aware of it, because pigeons cannot physically poop while they are flying. I checked, and my car is really not under anything upon which a pigeon can sit. So I say they must be able to poop mid-flight. Who’s right?
Dunno about pigeons, but I have seen a small bird of some sort in southeast Texas (near Houston) glide in at a car, drop a present, and break to the left like a bomber pilot as the bird poop nailed the rear windsheild of the car.
Honestly, I think they do it on purpose.
Birds certainly can poop while flying. I’ve seen 'em do it.
You must be kidding, bastards shit on my car within 5 minutes of washing it
Yes, they can poop while flying. In fact, I have read that they preferentially poop over roadways and parking lots, especially during migrations, because they mistake them for rivers and ponds. My professors were quite confident on this, but I never got a straight answer on why they would CARE if they were pooping over rivers, or why this would prove to be either a evolutionary (selective) or ecological advantage.
I have always maintained that they simply use roads and parking lots as navigational landmarks, as they have always used rivers and ponds in nature (this has been shown) and poop whereever they fly, and DON’T possess some sort of ludicrously anthropomorphic sense of “hygiene”.
As regards pigeon pooping specifically, a great deal of work was done in/around London in the 1960s/70s and early 80s, because it was a huge problem on monuments and government buildings. However I can’t guarantee they were the same pigeon species found in North America. Indeed, I personally felt seagulls must be equally to blame. Perhaps the government ornithologists identified the exact species through coprological analysis, but the public insisted on thinking of it as the “pigeon problem” – or maybe the lack of such analyses explains why the British governement enjoyed such limited success in controlling the problem, well into the 1980s.
Yes, I can confirm that birds, including pigeons, most certainly can poop in flight.
I’ve never heard of this, and am skeptical about it. I am having trouble imagining the kind of study one would have to do to document it.
Birds can use roads and rivers as navigational landmarks. They like to hang out in parking lots since it gives them an unobstructed view of approaching predators.
Yes, it’s the same species, the Rock Dove, or Rock Pigeon Columba livia. It was originally native to the Old World, but has been introduced to North America and throughout the world.
I thought birds couldn’t control when they poop? That they don’t have a sphincter? I could be totally wrong, though, I probably remember that from high school biology and they have new kingdoms now and a panda’s a bear again.
No, they have a cloacal (or vent) sphincter. If they didn’t, excretions would dribble out continuously.
I seem to remember, from a David Attenborough program, that some birds defend themselves by defecating on a predator.
This indeed suggests that they are able to control their toiletry functions and save the ammunition until it is most needed.
Having a sphincter is only part of the story though; it may be, for example, that the process of excretion (including relaxation of the sphincter to let it out) is more or less automatic or reflexive, triggered by nerves that detect the necessity.
The reason more bird shit accumulates under places where pigeons sit is not because they choose to crap only when they are there; it’s just that it gets concentrated in one spot because they spend time there; consider a lamp post with three pigeons sitting on it; after a minute, one flies off, but shortly afterwards, another one replaces it - so you might have three pigeons staying still within a ground footprint of maybe one square foot; it’s obvious that more crap is going to accumulate there than in the open, as long as the air above the open spot is not constantly populated with three pigeons per square foot of ground footprint
This sort of density does occur with pigeons and other birds (particularly starlings) when they are flocking to a roosting spot, and when it does occur, bird shit falls like rain.
In any case, if birds do actually have much possibility of restraint over their ecretory motions, they don’t often exercise it, and why should they? - you’re flying and you take a crap, or you’re sitting on a high branch and you take a crap; what difference does it make to you, the bird? You crapped and it was gone - that’s all you needed to happen.
Many animals hide or eject their feces as far as possible to avoid leaving telltale signs for predators, and have evolved elaborate physical mechanisms and/or behaviours to do so. An area strewn with feces is like a giant flashing neon advertisement informing predators that prey lives in the area.
I don’t know if this is also the case with the birds you are talking about and their propensity to poop in water, but the explanation certainly makes sense: bird feces lingers on the surface of the ground a lot longer than it does on the surface of a lake or river.
I imagine most birds are capable of unloading in-flight. To provide a highly relevant anecdote, I had a startling experience with a seagull once a few years ago that conclusively proved that the little bastards were out to get me.
I had just pulled into the parking lot at my college and was getting my books together when I noticed a large seagull sitting on top of a light post nearby. As I started walking away from my car, it took off and started flying over me – something about this arrangement just didn’t feel right, so I stopped short and took a step back. At that very moment, the bird unleashed a veritable torrent of gooey white feces, which tumbled and splattered as it fell through the air, finally coating the ground (and a few nearby cars) in an improbably wide spray just a few feet away from me, and precisely centered on where I would have been if I hadn’t stopped walking.
I felt invincible for the rest of the day. 
I’ve heard this as well, but I remember hearing on some Animal Channel program about how pigeons, when they lift off, defecate in order to lighten themselves, so as to avoid predators who might be alerted to their presence on take-off but before they got up to speed.
If this is so, it’s a wonder Superman changed in a phonebooth and not in a port-a-potty, eh?
Shit-Propelled Vertical Takeoff.
I wonder if it’ll catch on.
Heck, I once saw a great blue heron poop about a quart of white stuff while flying. He could have taken out several cars if his aim had been better.
