BOOKreMARKS: Bye, Bye Birdie

I’ve reached the final chapter of Sy Montgomery’s Birdology and I hesitate to begin it because I don’t want the book to end. Heck, I didn’t want the hummingbird chapter to end.

I’ve learned so much about birds (Montgomery writes: “A raptor’s vision is the sharpest of all living creatures.” They can spot prey across a three-square-mile area from 1,000 feet in the air.) and have delighted in the stories (Scientists studying homing pigeons at Cornell University had one bird who always made it back to Ithaca after being released elsewhere, but never returned to the coop as did the other birds in the study. Instead, locals who spotted the wayward banded bird in their yards would report it to Cornell, then send the bird back to the scientists—in a taxi! I’m guessing the first time the pigeon failed to return to the coop was an honest mistake, but thereafter he made it a point to meet some new neighbors and get chauffeured through town.)

If you’re not already schooled in bird behavior, please read Birdology. It will enrich your connection to the great outdoors.

[Falcon photo from Audubon Magazine; Frill Back Pigeon photo from the National Pigeon Association.]

Bird Briefs, Part 2

They’re fluttering outside my windows and inside my books: birds. Thought I’d say a few words about them.

Extreme Rescue
Sy Montgomery’s latest book, Birdology, is a delightful collection of stories, histories, lore, and facts about seven avian species (or, if some scientists get their way, seven dinosaur species). She devotes one chapter to hummingbirds, profiling the day-to-day efforts of a “hummer” rehabber who specializes in fostering orphaned baby hummers—so tiny they’re best observed with the aid of a magnifying glass.

One member of the 340+ hummingbird species journeys from Mexico to Alaska each year—the longest migration, in terms of body length, of any bird. The first portion of the course includes a trek across the Gulf of Mexico—a 21-hour, nonstop flight. It’s a miraculous show of stamina and endurance, and not every hummer is up to it. Montgomery mentions one unfortunate bird who collapsed on an oil rig. The (unnamed) oil company ordered a helicopter to transport the feathered patient to a wildlife rehabber in the States, where the little guy spent months recuperating in a greenhouse. He caught up with his pals on their return migration to Mexico. I’m not sure which is more amazing: the hummers’ migration or the oil company’s good deed.


Say It Isn’t So
If you’ve read Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, you know how packed it is with details about 1890s Chicago—the dust, the odors, the politics. Of all the remarkable and sometimes shocking facts Larson presents, one in particular stood out to me. Frederick Law Olmsted, as part of the magical landscape he conjured for the Columbian Exposition, populated the lagoons with birds. Larson writes: “Olmsted had ordered more than eight hundred ducks and geese, seven thousand pigeons, and for the sake of accent a number of exotic birds, including four snowy egrets, four storks, two brown pelicans, and two flamingoes.”

SEVEN THOUSAND PIGEONS? Really? Weren’t there enough pigeons in Chicago already? Every species on Olmsted’s list is a water bird except the pigeon. Could it be that a critical word—say, Guillemot—was omitted from the copy? Perhaps Olmsted imported 7,000 Guillemot Pigeons to the fair, which would make sense. Readers, can you shed any light on this matter?


Platonic Pairings
I’ve written before about LuckyBird and his sparrow pal. What I’ve not yet relayed is that we have been watching two other similar pairs at our feeders. The cardinals are young adults and, in both cases, the sparrows seem more committed to the relationships than their crimson counterparts. Is it misguided, unrequited love? Are they just friends? Will they ever mate with their own kind? Again, dear readers, if you know anything about cross-species relationships, please enlighten me.

“Birds teach us reverence—a virtue that, writes classicist and philosopher Paul Woodruff, ‘begins in a deep understanding of human limitations.’ ”
—from Birdology, by Sy Montgomery

[Art by Ernst Haeckel (top) and Charley Harper (bottom).]

Avian James Bond Ready for WWI Espionage

I stumbled upon this pic and had to share it with you. It's from the International Spy Museum.

I know, I know. It may seem that I'm obsessed with pigeons. But really, I just notice them differently these days.

PETA, Paul, and Pigeons

Let me say right upfront that, contrary to the above headline, there is no "Paul" in this post. It was a cheap alliterative trick that brought back fond memories of the singing trio.

Now to the matter: I have been remiss. I've been avoiding reviving the pigeon saga (see Lull's July 5th entry, "What Would PETA Do?") for a number of reasons, not least of which is every time I thought the saga had come to a close, it would magically reopen again.

Working Birds

The day I began researching the birds, a pigeon in South America made headlines. It was caught smuggling a cellphone into a prison for one of the residents. Of course you know pigeons have served for centuries as postal carriers, but did you also know these versatile birds operate in search-and-rescue missions because of their exceptional eyesight? What's more, pigeons can hear sound at lower frequencies than humans—for instance, thunderstorms and volcanoes in the distance, wind blowing across a building—which may account for the sudden and seemingly senseless need for flocks of pigeons to take flight from a telephone wire.

Diverse Family Tree

Pigeons may all look the same to you, but that's only because you probably see just a few types in your part of the world. They range in size from the dimensions of a sparrow to those of a turkey and may be found in nearly every corner of the Earth (except Antarctica, the high Arctic, and the driest part of the Sahara). They've been here for millions of years.

Though scientists have studied the showier breeds, little research has been conducted on the pigeons common to inner cities. (Cornell ornithologists are working on filling this gap. You can help them with Project PigeonWatch.)

It Takes a Family to Raise a Colony

Pigeons mate for life and share in parenting duties. In fact, both genders produce the nutrient-rich "crop milk" for their offspring, and both incubate the eggs. And it was at this point in my research that the messy pigeons on our back stairway were beginning to endear themselves to me.

I learned that it wouldn't take long for the eggs to hatch and not long after that, the fledglings would be ready to take off and we could encourage the families to look for a new residence.

I started noticing banded pigeons and wondered where their homes were. (I'm not good at catching birds so was unable to help them return to their guardians.)

But upon further reading, a harsh reality set in.

Each mated pair could raise multiple families in one year; the extended family would stick around and raise their own broods on the stairs; they posed health risks to our pets.

They had to go.

I read lots of forums about pigeon-removal best practices and for every method that worked at one apartment building, it didn't work at another. There didn't seem to be a solution. Until I started reviewing all the years I've lived here and why we never had this problem before: cats. And not even killer-instinct cats. Even my super-sweet special-needs cat did the trick.

However, before I could appeal to the other tenants to rescue a few shelter cats to guard against pigeon population growth, the feathered critters were gone. I don't know why, and I don't want to know.

But I'm grateful for the motivation to learn more about a remarkable bird typically regarded as a stupid pest.

What Would PETA Do?

I live in an urban area where we're accustomed to four kinds of wild creatures: pigeons and sparrows in the air, and squirrels and rats on the ground. Anything else is exotic.

As is typical of urban buildings,  ours has strips of wire spikes atop all the windows, doors, and ledges of our back stairway to prevent these creatures from cohabiting with us. And with the exception of some delightful purple finches who managed to make a nest in the outermost corner of our stairway roof a few years ago, the spikes have successfully fulfilled their purpose. Until now.

This Spring, some pigeons attempted to build a nest in the inch or so of space between the spikes and the wall. They failed.

But they tried again behind the spikes above a window, where another inch or so of space granted them success. It was a narrow, haphazard nest that left little room for the adult pigeon, but it was enough.

I was thrilled. How often do you get to watch baby pigeons? My neighbor, whose back door was opposite the sentry adults, was less thrilled.

I curtailed my trips down that back stairway—partially because I didn't want to traumatize the nesters, partially because I didn't want them to traumatize me. They didn't always stay on the nest. More often they were sitting on our third-floor landing or on the railing. A trek down our stairs incited frantic cries and frenzied movement from the birds. And dodging their waste matter now caking our stairway was unpleasant.

Soon enough, though, two babies could be spied in the nest. And last weekend they literally flew the coop. Our avian squatters were moving on.

I was relieved. Until last night.

I was headed down the back stairs to the basement and when I reached the second floor landing, there was a new pigeon nest. Well, "new" may not be the appropriate adjective. Remember the failed home-construction attempt of the first pigeons? Some of the twigs fell away from that nest onto the wood flooring below. The new pigeons hauled those few twigs into the corner of the landing, which isn't really a corner unless the outer door of the apartment is ajar. Which it is right now only because someone didn't latch it properly. But the pigeons didn't know that. They probably view the door as some kind of armored protection for their two eggs. They probably view themselves as brilliant.

One pigeon stood guard near the twigs. I spoke softly to her/him, hoping to get past without a conflict. But then on the first-floor landing were two more pigeons acting AS IF they had a nest there, above the door. But there was no nest to be seen.

I don't know what this means. I read Birdy and watched Little Voice, but can't recall anything that would help me understand our pigeons' behavior. I haven't researched it yet and, frankly, I'm a little afraid of what I might learn.

Those two eggs on the ground aren't safe. If by some miracle they suffer no damage and hatch, then most assuredly the infant birds are vulnerable to any number of predators.

Should we intervene now? Move the eggs? Put vegetable oil on them? (Isn't that how the gull and geese populations are reduced?) Guess I have some Googling to do.

I like animals and I want to do what's best for them. But I'm not keen on sharing space with pigeons. Or any other creature that I worry may attack me as I'm trying to use my own stairs.

What would PETA do?