Feral pigeons and the London Pigeon String Foot and Rescue group

I always had a negative view of pigeons as being “flying rats”, but someone pointed this out to me that humans domesticated them, revered them, bred them, used them to deliver messages and then the telegram and telephone came along. These new communication tools made them superfluous to our needs so we abandoned them.

Put in that context it’s rather sad.

I'm guessing these guys have never had Pigeon-Induced Severe Sleep Exhaustion Disorder. I ended up chronically PISSED due to some loud ass pigeons nesting outside my window. 4 hours sleep a night over a period of months sucks.

My wife and a few friends were into helping feral cats. I did a few stints. Built a shelter, helped bake cookies for sale to generate funds etc.

I remember doing predator-prey models at uni. The issue is that the population will just grow until it’s at some kind of capacity. Cats are easier to capture and spay, but an issue there is that for every cat that lives longer, many thousands of native animals are going to die. But the cat is cuter and visible, so we help it.

For eg pigeons, what limits the population? You can’t capture and neuter every bird, so population restriction is environmental. If you add food, rather than 1000 birds you now have 1100 birds, etc. Ideally we’re being kind to a balanced population of birds that play some part in the local ecosystem, rather than one that we created and out-competes other birds because we give it a hand.

Not an expert. Experts, what’s the best outcome here?

Edit: emigrated to Sydney. Took 3 moggies with us at great expense but they’re now inside cats so we don’t annihilate the local wildlife and irritate all the neighbours (who are rightfully very protective of their native animals). Cats are happy. A friend’s mom looked after about 17 feral kittens. Now 17 grown cats that eat a lot of food made of presumably gentle cows. This is not well-thought out. But kittens are cute and have utterly hacked humans.

A good article is this 2006 piece in the New York Times called "Pigeon Wars"

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/magazine/15pigeons.html

My take from that is the Pigeon population is a function of the food supply, so to reduce the pigeon population you reduce the food. Which includes that supplied by the Pigeon lovers.

There are parts of the world where pigeons are bred for food in the same way chicken might be, and in fact, it can be considered a delicacy.

When I was a kid (in Cairo) my father let me keep a small pigeon coop on the roof. We'd buy a few, then you have to keep them locked in the coop for a couple weeks so that they "home" there. After that, they'd be allowed to leave and fly wherever they'd like, and they'd always come back to the coop to nest at night. You'd feed them once a day or so by throwing some grain on the floor outside the coop, and they'd learn to associate a cue (like waving a flag) with feeding time and fly back to eat.

That said, I could never bring myself to eat them (not because of disgust, but just because at that point they felt like pets).

All of my pigeon questions were answered at Pigeons.biz [1], a forum community dedicated to pigeon owners and enthusiasts. They have over 50,000 members and 900,000 posts.

[1] https://www.pigeons.biz

I find them interesting but wound up disliking them greatly because they make a mess. When you make them mistake of not having the heart to ruin their nest and have to shovel buckets full of poop at the end, and them getting poop on your terrace daily, you kind of get sick of them.

I would not mind them as much if they did not shit everywhere.