A Common Sight, This Bird Is Full of Surprises
By Jim Knox
I held my dad’s hand, poised to ascend the steps of The American Museum of Natural History, when their jerky movements first caught my eye. I studied them and wondered how they did it. How could the chunky birds circle around our feet, snatch food in an instant, and swirl into flight, narrowly missing speeding cars, taxis, and trucks? They seemed so at ease, so natural in their environment, that it must be their home. While they didn’t originate in Manhattan, or even the New World, in a sense, they were very much at home.
Columba livia, better known as the Rock Dove, Rock Pigeon, or Common Pigeon, is a bird of the Old World. Its close association with humans and its adaptability have facilitated its spread around the globe. Buenos Aires and London harbor flocks of these ubiquitous birds, as do Tokyo and Johannesburg. In fact, the first animal I observed on the African continent—while taxiing into Joburg airport—was a Rock Dove. Though favoring urban habitats worldwide, they also thrive in the countryside, nesting in barns, steeples, bridges, and rock ledges. As grain eaters which supplement their diet with insects, Rock Doves are especially adaptable.
Its human-fostered introductions and legendary adaptability have made pinpointing the Rock Dove’s original range guesswork. Our best estimates put its true home range somewhere in Mediterranean Europe or North Africa, and its predilection for sheer vertical nesting spots and lofty perches indicate cliffs or mountainous regions were their preferred habitat. Yet, most of this is educated guesswork, made hazy by a longstanding association with humankind — the first Rock Doves were domesticated approximately 4,500 B.C.!
Intermediate in size between an American Robin and an American Crow, the Rock Dove is a plump-bodied bird with a wide rounded tail, short red or pink legs, a small head, and a short, straight beak. Its traditional plumage, or feather coloration and patterning, consists of a blue-gray body, an iridescent green, blue, and purple throat, two black wing bars and a black-tipped tail.
The first Rock Doves introduced to North America arrived in the early 1600’s. Yet this was just the most recent leg of the Rock Dove’s world tour. Their great utility to humans has led to domestication and selective breeding which has yielded an enormous number of varieties—more than 1,000 and counting! Such variety has produced black, white, pied (white splotched) and red-plumaged birds. In fact, the Rock Dove’s popularity has been enduring over the past 65 centuries, feral birds have bred with true wild pigeons such that true wild pigeons may actually be extinct.
While some birds were bred for their colors and patterns, the Rock Dove is far more than an avian pretty face. Representing a ready and prolific food source, the doves have accompanied human settlement around the globe. For many gamekeepers and farmers, that would be enough but there is far more to our stocky, cooing neighbors than a casual glance might reveal.
Equipped by nature to evade all but the swiftest avian predators, the pigeon’s plump, 1.25-pound frame conceals a body packed with powerful flight muscles. A closer look reveals sharply pointed wings which provide them with exceptional and rapid maneuverability. With a top flight speed of 70 miles per hour—and bursts of up to 97 miles per hour for trained birds—the dove is among the world’s fastest birds in level flight.
As a bird with modest home ranges and indelible homing tendency, it has gained renown over the millennia for its homing ability. This attribute has conferred untold benefits to our species. As message carriers for the U.S. Army Signal Corps in World War I and World War II, “Homing” pigeons delivered strategic information to their “home” roosts—saving many lives. The bird’s behaviors have also advanced the science of animal behavior. Charles Darwin kept flocks of pigeons for years, which provided keen insights into his study of animal behaviors and the natural world.
Not to be outdone by the army, the U.S. Navy in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard, recognized the pigeon’s ultra-keen vision to save lives. In 1979, the 14th Coast Guard District in Honolulu teamed up with The Naval Ocean Systems Center to develop Project Sea Hunt in which teams of three pigeons were trained to use their exceptional field of view and color vision to spot the red and orange colors of life vests of downed aviators and sailors lost at sea. By pecking at sections of a clear bubble canopy suspended beneath Marine HH-46 Sea Knight and Coast Guard HH-52 Sea Guard rescue helicopters to receive a treat, the birds would alert the crew via sensor to the presence of the Personal Flotation Devices from miles away. With a 90% success rate in ocean trials, the birds outperformed their human counterparts roughly 2:1.
If that wasn’t impressive enough, consider the pigeon’s superpower— magneto-reception. Tiny Magnetite deposits in the bird’s beak give it the ability to orient to the poles and the earth’s magnetic field, conferring unparalleled navigation ability.
With these extraordinary attributes to its credit, and others emerging from scientific research, the Rock Dove has much more to reveal. So, t he next time you see a pigeon bobbing along a sidewalk or scurrying for handouts in a city park, know you are in the presence of a common bird with most uncommon abilities.
Jim Knox serves as the Curator of Education for Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo and as a Science Adviser for The Bruce Museum. His passions include studying our planet’s rarest creatures and sharing his work with others who love the natural world.
