Pigeon Politics

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Once again, I have a bone to pick with Cecil’s answers, old though they may be. Last week, it was his endorsement of vinegar as a solution to cat-spray odor, which really does not work. Now it’s pigeons

I don’t think Cecil offers the primary reason that pigeons adapt well to an urban environment. That hundreds of generations ago their pigeon grandparents were fed out of a trough hardly seems adequate explanation.

What are the four species of birds most likely to be found living in an urban setting? Worldwide, I think, but certainly in North America? Pigeons, starlings, English sparrows, and crows. What do these four species have in common? They flock. They’re societal, garrulous birds who have followed the safety-in-numbers evolutionary route. It’s my theory, based on 30-odd years of birdwatching and reading of evolution and animal-behavior books, that this is the key factor in their ability to live among humans.

Consider: the birds who claim and guard their territory—the solitary songbirds, who sing to warn others away—are never found living in an urban setting. Their whole existence is one of defended solitude. Flocking birds, however—who use their song to communicate within their group; to stay together—these are the birds who’ve moved into the cities. Their whole existence, of course, is urban crowding in microcosm. They’re used to jostling shoulders with other birds, squabbling over food, etc. The crowded urban setting is just an extension—an exaggeration—of that.

And no, I don’t have cites, but I feel pretty confident in the logic, and I have a great deal of non-professional and professional experience of birds, and a lifetime of being a science-book-worm.

Any one care to comment, one way or the other?

2

I just wanted to point out an entire group of birds that you missed, namely the raptors. Generally, raptors do not flock; however, they can in fact survive well in cities, though they rarely end up there voluntarily. Many cities, however, have deliberately imported falcons, for example, as a partial check on populations of urban vermin, which of course include

(wait for it…)

pigeons.

3

The column can also be found on pages 16-18 of Cecil Adams’ book «The Straight Dope (1984; reissued 1986, 1998)».

4

Raptors that live in urban areas are the exception, not the rule; the same cannot be said of the species I mention (with which I should have included several gull species, also flocking birds). For that matter, in my own experience, there are isolated spots in downtown Chicago that play host to small populations of songbirds that are not usually considered urban residents: white crowned sparrows, ovenbirds, even a few warbler species. These, also, are the exception, and not the rule.

5

My grandma still lives in the Bronx where I grew up. Parkchester specifically.

She has a birdfeeder and you’d be surprised at the finches and chickadees and bluebirds that show up.

I thought the operative thing was “trees.” Pigeons and seagulls don’t care too much about them, so you’ll see them making their homes uptown where there aren’t so many trees.

On the other hand the little postage stamp playground where I played as a tyke has several good sized trees, and they are typically overcrowded to the point of bursting with various avian occupants and birds’ nests.

It’s so severe, that even in the Bronx, where parking spaces are at a premium 24/7, nobody parks their car near that little playground and its trees.

Most varieties of birds in general seem to do just fine finding food sources, but in a city, trees and shrubberies are at a premium and birds that nest in them have a tough time finding roosting space.

Grackles are very social birds, prone to large flocks, but they roost and nest in trees, so you don’t see them in an urban environment very much.

Mourning Doves are the mother flockers of them all (heh, heh,) but you don’t see them in urban environments.

They need trees.

Lots of trees on my farm, but where do the pigeons stay? In the barn.

So, your thesis while interesting, is unsupported by the evidence.

You can’t meaningfully say whether a given species of bird will have a large presence in an urban environment based on it’s sociability, but you can based on its nesting and roosting habits.

6

What Scylla said, plus:

I can’t relate any personal observations concerning starlings and sparrows, but I can tell you about pigeons and crows (and to a lesser extent, northeastern ravens).

These things will eat anything. The pigeons eat the junk that people drop on the street in our local city (or our aproximation of a city) and the crows (& ravens) eat the detrius of suburbia. To wit: roadkill, dead cats, grass seed, vegetables some benighted suburbanite planted, the eggs of Broadwing hawks, etc.

I think we notice these species more because we see them every day, just because they live off of our garbage.

FWIW - I live in the Northeastern U.S. and I’m seeing fewer and fewer ravens every year (they won’t eat carrion, or at least they’re pickier than the crows).

7

I still think flocking is the primary reason. The reason you see the four or five species mentioned the most frequently (they’re hardly the only species that flock) is undoubtedly because of their feeding habits (as noted by Exgineer) and their nesting habits (as noted by Scylla). I imagine if you were to do a survey of North America’s bird species and eliminated all that required solitary territories; all that had specialized diets; and all that had specialized (specifically nonurban) nesting requirements, you’d be left with exactly these species. Housefinches are starting to make a comeback in some areas, but they’re still more suburban than urban. The same with the birds mentioned by Scylla. (There’s a distinct difference, ecologically speaking, between the Bronx and Wall Street; you’ll find English sparrows and pigeons on Wall street, but no chickadees or bluebirds. Similarly, there’s a difference between the Seattle neighborhood where I work and where I keep a birdbook by my windowwall–ravens, Stellers jays, bushtits, yellow warblers, ruby-throated hummingbirds, rufous-sided towhees, even the occasional bald eagle–and the Seattle neighborhood where I live–English sparrows, pigeons, crows, and a couple different species of gulls.)

And I’m fairly certain Scylla’s wrong about the mourning dove; he may be thinking of the passenger pigeon, which once darkened the skies from horizon to horizon, and is now extinct. I’ve seen small flocks of mourning doves congregate around winter birdfeeders, but at other times of the year I usually see them in pairs.

8

Hey, I’m not knocking it. It’s my favorite way to spend 2 minutes.

**

That has nothing to do with the ecology. Despite the lipservice paid to equality and tolerance, a chickadee or a bluebird seeking a career in finance is going to find a lot of doors closed by the white anglo-saxon pigeons which dominate that inustry.

Nope. Methinks perhaps it is thou who art confused.

Mourning doves are in season every year in Pa for about 3 weeks after labor day, and after shooting, cleaning and eating several hundred over the past seven years, I feel pretty competant in my abilities to identify this form of living skeet. If it were actually an extinct passenger pigeon that I was shooting, I’m sure I would notice.

I tend to think you might be mistaken (though I confess ignorance of mourning dove habits on the West coast,) because mourning doves are migratory birds.

They start to flock together around labor day, and head south about a month later, and don’t start to return until late March.

My understanding is that given a good food source like a feeder, a migratory bird may opt out of its transcontinental flight, and just stick where the pickings are good, so I don’t doubt you’re seeing them in feeders in the winter, but the reason you don’t see the rest of them is that they got the flock out of there.

9

According to Peterson’s, the mourning dove’s winter range is the lower two thirds of the US, reaching up to the Canadian border as you approach the Pacific Ocean. If your local population masses in the fall to fly south, no doubt why you’ve seen them in such numbers. I’ve always lived below that line, or in a big city, so I’ve never seen them flock like that.

10

And here, I thought that they went somewhere interesting but what you’re saying is that they stop somewhere around Dollyland?

Hardly worth the trip IMO.

11

Another bird you might add to the list is the magpie, which I believe is related to ravens. Around here, they seem to fill approximately the same niche as pigeons elsewhere. They don’t seem inclined towards large flocks, but they do congregate some: I’ve never seen cluds of them in the air like you’ll sometimes see with pigeons, but it isn’t unusual in the spring to see a dozen or so milling about on the ground

12

I think Exgineer has identified one of the primary causes of success in cities: diet. The birds that do well in cities are those that have a broad diet, especially those that are at least partly granivorous (including grain products like bread crumbs or seeds provided at feeders) - or frugivorous (which use fruits of ornamental trees, etc.). Exclusively insectivorous species are mostly limited to parks within cities, if present at all.

Flocking behavior is not so much a cause of success in cities but rather a corollary of diet. There are several functions for flocking behavior, one of them being a defense against predators (by providing many watchful eyes, and a plethora of targets to confuse an attacker). Another is food-finding. This works best for frugivorous or granivorous species whose food often occurs in clumps too large to be consumed by a single bird (such as a fruit tree or grain field). Having lots of seekers can help find such food sources while not being detrimental to the individual flock members. In contrast, the resources for insectivorous/carnivorous species are scarcer and more isolated, so that such species don’t flock as much.

Note that many species are territorial in the breeding season, and their flocking behavior is limited to the winter.

I also grew up in the Bronx (near Parkchester, incidently - Westchester Square). Aside from House Sparrows, Starlings, and pigeons (Rock Doves), other species on my Bronx “yard list” include American Robin, Northern Mockingbird, American Crow, Blue Jay, Dark-eyed Junco, and Mourning Dove. (BTW, Scylla, Mourning Doves are regularly found in the vicinity of Parkchester, even in winter.) All these species feed at least in part on grains or fruit, and all flock at least in winter.

One of the few purely insectivorous species I see regularly in the Bronx is the Common Nighthawk, which can be heard calling overhead on summer nights as they catch flying insects. They often to nest on flat apartment house roofs.