It was grey outside my window, typical concrete canyon. The ledge that ran around this side of the building was under shelter, and the air con units that perched there sat coated in a cement of guano from the pigeons who roosted in the beams. It was pretty disgusting.
Judith had been at this desk before me, and she hated those pigeons. Rats with wings, she said, it’s a health hazard. Over the years the property manager had regularly got the pest control guys in, to – well I didn’t like to ask.
I wasn’t very fond of city pigeons myself. Scavengey, red-eyed, with feathers the colour of a petrol puddle on the road. Compared to the beautiful and wacky birds that were here in Aotearoa before humans were? Drab.
But then one morning I noticed the nest. A couple of iceblock sticks, a twistie tie, a bread tag and some weedy little twigs. Glued together with…was that pigeon poo? Judith confirmed, r
olling her eyes. A day later there was an egg in it, and a pair of pigeons keeping it warm. And suddenly I was hooked. My own personal pigeon soap opera was playing out, on the other side of the window behind my desk.
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That egg was never alone, constantly attended by its devoted parents. I didn’t know enough about pigeons to tell them apart, but it didn’t seem to matter. One pigeon would sit patiently on egg-warming duties while the other stopped by to feed it, on and off throughout the day – and then at some point they would swap. I became obsessed. What if their egg didn’t hatch? There were older, abandoned nests around the ledge with orphaned eggs still in them. Had their parents been pest-controlled, never to return? Killed in traffic? There were other pigeons flapping about as well, squabbling over territory, perching briefly on the bird-spikes before reeling across the ledge. It wouldn’t have taken much to knock that nest right off. But morning after morning, as I sat down at my desk, there it was.
Then one day my pigeon friend seemed curiously restless. It stared back at me with a beady red side-eye, and as it lifted a wing I saw – gross. What was that? A greasy looking, yellowish chick had hatched; its feathers like an old man’s comb-over, sparse and wiry over the waxy skin. I’d never seen a pigeon ‘squab’ before, and as I watched it feebly blinking and nodding, I realised I’d never even seen a pigeon in the street that looked at all like a youngster. I started to pay more attention to the city pigeons then, out and about, and wonder about them.
Because in some ways they are like rats (with wings). They live alongside us, recycling our
rubbish. They live on abandoned kebabs, leftover chips, sandwich crusts. They’ve adapted to the environments we’ve built for ourselves, making use of buildings’ high ledges, and windowsills, and roofs. Power lines, and city trees, and statues. And, they make a terrible mess.
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But some say that pigeons should not just be seen as inconvenient pests. Rather, they’re an urban keystone species, a sort of canary-in-the-coalmine for city environments. More research on pigeons (beyond how best to keep their numbers down) could tell us a lot about the conditions we ourselves are living in.They’re in every city of the world, so they’re an ideal subject for studying regional differences and changes in environmental conditions: pollution levels, disease, and climate change. Pigeons could also help us understand, and maybe even predict, changes to biodiversity across different geographical areas.
What’s more, as a wild urban species, pigeons can be a link between people and nature, encouraging a conservation mindset. It might seem like a small thing, but urban birds, along with trees and greenspace, can help take the edge off the built environment, and improve our mental health.
So why are we so quick to dismiss pigeons, and call them rats with wings? Maybe looking at them is too much like looking in a mirror. We made this dirty city, full of rubbish and disease, and we accept it as normal. We may keep our individual, domestic environments clean, but our quality of life is underpinned by the daily production of tonnes of excess food, leftover scraps, and stinking waste. We live, like the pigeons, in our own shit.
Time passed, and the property manager rang to ask what state the ledge was in. Was it time to get the pest control company in and organise a clean-up? The chick had started to look a lot more pigeon-ish now, tottering about and flapping its wings. It eyed me quizzically through the glass. Doesn’t look too bad here actually, I said. How about I call you back in a few weeks?
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