Sunday 6 August 2023
A plague of pigeons
Alexander Poots has an entertaining Critic piece on the curse of the feral pigeon.
A plague of pigeons
When the magic of nature becomes a curse
I was at my desk, looking out of the window. A grey ball blustered past with a twig in its beak. Three minutes later, it was back with another twig. Then another. Aw, I said, it’s building a nest. So it was. The pigeon was building a nest next door, on the windowsill of the empty house. Aren’t birds wonderful, I thought. The magic of nature.
A week later, there were twelve of the bastards. This sounds like an exaggeration. It isn’t. I counted them: twelve. Within days, the gutters and downpipes of the house next door were glutinous with guano, as if plastered with pancake batter.
We mainly see wood pigeons in the garden and occasionally one becomes a sparrowhawk dinner. Which reminds me - years ago we used to see a stall in Derby market hall selling pigeons for the dinner table or presumably for pigeon pie which sounds tasty and traditional.
The feral pigeon is a seedy character. They should not be confused with wood pigeons. Wood pigeons are real beauty queens, plump and pretty and ready for the pie. You’d have to be desperate to eat a feral pigeon. Graphite plumage crawls with mites. Eyes are a traffic-light orange, with an oily slick of green at the throat. Chickpea brain whirs away, always alert for new shitting grounds.
Feral pigeons don’t just look rotten. They are rotten. In 2021, the British Pest Control Association found that 49 per cent carry a form of chlamydia that can be passed to humans. They cause other diseases, too. The worst is histoplasmosis. That’s when you get fungal spores in the lungs. Histoplasmosis can be fatal.
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5 comments:
Round here, wood pigeons are the most common species. They like to sit in the trees overlooking the fields, where they go to feed. So they deposit guano all over the lawn. And they nest everywhere. At first we thought this was interesting, and encouraged the children to look out for nests; but there are so many of them it just became boring. They are useless parents, rarely hatching eggs or raising chicks to adulthood. I think the magpies get them.
If we form an Anti-Pigeon League do you think we could get Farage to lead it? He's been the only British politician in years who can get anything done.
The ones in our Wistaria frighten the s*** out of me when I walk outside with the dog each morning...
My neighbour has a sharp stick which he pokes up at the nest in his creepers each day, but the b******s still keep coming back!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY
Sam - we often find bits of broken pigeon egg in the garden. They make such useless nests I suspect some eggs just fall through the gaps.
dearieme - a Pigeon Pie League could work if Farage manages to rope in a few TV chefs.
Scrobs - I use one of my runner bean canes to poke their nests out of the magnolia. Easy to do, they are only a few twigs made into a flimsy platform.
dearieme - but only those unsuitable for pies.
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