I’ve been slightly obsessed with pigeons today and spent more time than I should admit reading Wikipedia entries about Feral Pigeons, (basically no-longer-domesticated Rock Doves), Wood Pigeons, which have a really cute voice, and the master list of types of doves and pigeons.
I reckon a couple of events brought on my miniature fascination with all things Columbidae today. First, there’s the fact that Joel boxed in the soffits of the front porch, effectively blocking off an ad-hoc pigeon coop. When the soffits were still accessible, a couple of pigeons set up housekeeping in there and were industriously making more pigeons and crapping all over the front porch. Joel has since removed the birds and blocked their access to the soffit, so now they’re hanging around in the neighbor’s gutters and grumbling.
Pigeons are horny little fuckers. They’ll basically keep on reproducing as long as there is sufficient food around, and considering that they’ll eat damn near anything, there’s pretty much never a shortage of food, so there’s never a shortage of pigeons either.
Because pigeons are horny, they’re always running around trying to get laid and I’m here to tell you there’s not a whole lot that’s funnier than a pigeon trying to pull.
It’s like, “hey baby…my neck’s really big…like something else!!!”
On my way to work on this beautiful spring morning, I rode through the bottoms and saw pigeons spinning around and chasing each other with their necks all puffed out. It made my day by making me laugh first thing in the morning.
There are a few rather pretty pinkish buff pigeons I see scattered amongst the normal grey/blue/black ones, and I wondered if they were just mutants, or if there was a specific breed of pigeon that was meant to be brown. Apparently, they’re just a color variant with in the Rock Dove type, so they’re little feathery brown mutants.
And speaking of mutants, here are some of the more interesting (and by interesting I mean completely weird) breeds of domesticated pigeons:
Roller Pigeons. They’re specifically bred for their stuntman flight patterns which may be the result of a bit of neurological mis-wiring.
But even more defective is the variant they call a Parlor Roller:
Fan-Tail pigeons
I’d like to state right now that the only thing funnier than regular pigeons trying to get lucky is a couple of fan-tail pigeons getting their flirt on:
Pouter Pigeon
Laughing Dove – not strictly a fancy pigeon, but I couldn’t pass up this little critter’s crazy voice.
But really I’m saving the best for last. This is the kind of oxymoron that I couldn’t make up if I tried. There’s a breed of “utility pigeon,” which is an euphemism for “pigeon meant to be eaten” called an American Giant Runt. Could anything possibly surpass the name American Giant Runt? I’m sure it could, but you’d go a long way to find that sort of a capper.
The regular rollers are weirdly beautiful, but shoot, the parlor rollers are just depressing.
The fantails remind me of some of the really ornamental chickens, which are equally goofy-looking (but probably don’t strut their stuff so … well? no, that’s not the word…).
I agree – they’re really tragically fucked up little birds, and they exist because of inbreeding and because people thought it was cool to breed brain-damaged pigeons.
The very concept of a “feral pigeon” brings joy to my heart.
It makes them sound rather fierce and fearsome doesn’t it?
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