The amazing talents of pigeons – and why we should learn to love them

I was walking in the park with a friend recently, when they pointed at a pigeon and told me I was looking at their favourite bird. I was incredulous. Pigeons? Those winged vermin? My friend responded with this twisted logic: it makes a lot of sense for pigeons to be your favourite bird, because you get to enjoy them all the time.

Temporarily bemused, I wondered if anyone could really be so enamoured with pigeons. Turns out, the joke’s on me. When I spoke to other friends and colleagues, a surprising number of them had a lot of love for the humble pidge. One New Scientist colleague, who will remain nameless, confessed to having a secret pigeon tattoo. I even saw a news report about a couple whose adopted pigeon sleeps in their bed.

As I read around a little, I found that pigeons do have a lot to recommend them. Aside from their well-known homing abilities, they are unassumingly intelligent. They are no mammal, but do produce a kind of milk. They kiss each other, applaud themselves after sex and can recognise individual people (and can remember the ones who are mean to them). Add all that together and maybe, I thought, I could learn to love this seemingly ordinary bird after all. So, armed with my curiosity and a bag of oats, I set out to do just that.

A bit of bird-watching

I wanted to conduct my investigation with at least a whiff of scientific integrity, so I conceived of an “experiment”. First, I…