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Pandemonium Aviaries - Organisation dedicated to preventing the extinction of targeted avian species through conservation and education.
Pigeon Aid UK - A site that provides advice for those who have picked up a sick, injured or baby pigeon and need guidance.
Pigeon and Dove Rescue - A website aimed at providing help for anyone that has rescued a pigeon or dove by providing details of pigeon friendly rescue centres, vets and guidance on how to care for orphaned, sick or injured pigeons.
Pigeon Angels - A forum dedicated to the support & care of all pigeons, feral or fancy, that find themselves in jeopardy.
Pigeon Blog - A bona fide urban pigeon telling it how it is for the pigeons of London.
Pigeon Control Advisory Service (PiCAS) - PiCAS specialises in the provision of non-lethal, holistic and sustainable bird control systems, which will result in a permanent reduction in bird numbers.
Pigeon Control Resource Centre (PCRC) - An online resource for anyone with a pigeon-related problem. All information and advice provided on the website is geared towards completely solving pigeon control problems by the use of humane and non-lethal control methods.
Pigeon Tales - Interesting blog following the lives of a family of feral pigeons living with the author.
Pigeon-Talk - A global forum open to all pigeon lovers.
Rescue Report - Wonderful blog about fostering and adopting pigeons (from MickaCoo Pigeon & Dove Rescue).
Urban Wildlife Society - Their mission is to promote appreciation for all animals, particularly pigeons, that share the city and suburbs with humans. The website is filled with information and articles about inhumane pest control and offers advice on alternative measures.
Wild Bird Fund - Website for the non-profit organization that provides assistance for wild birds, including feral pigeons, in New York City.
Pigeon Rescue: people who can help Links to various pigeon-friendly organisations, groups, rescue centres, and vets that can help with injured, ill or orphaned pigeons and doves.
The problem of chronic egg laying Talking about the problem of continuous egg laying in birds (e.g. risks to health) and possible solutions.
Pet pigeons - what we mean Explaining what we mean when we talk about keeping pigeons as pets. In brief: We mean keeping tame, imprinted or disabled pigeons that would not otherwise survive in the wild.
Hand-rearing pigeons - right or wrong? Controversial post on whether it is right to hand-rear a pigeon on its own and therefore potentially cause them to become imprinted on humans.
Invisible babies Why we don’t normally see baby pigeons, their growth rate (photos included) and info on what to do if you find a baby pigeon.
I think Elmo’s bad behaviour has rubbed off onto Georgie. Look what she’s doing:
Georgie bathing in the cat’s water bowl.
Poor Hugo cat doesn’t know where to go when the pigeons are having a bath in his water bowl!!
Elmo bathing in the cat’s water bowl.
Richard and I went for a walk in Jesmond Dene park and had a look at the animals in Pet’s Corner. We were amused to see some Geordie woodpigeons stuffing their crops on the free food! The ducks were fast asleep nearby. They didn’t seem bothered by the theft.
This is a question I’ve often wondered. The way pigeons walk was the first thing that attracted me to them when I was a little girl. I love the head-bobbing and strut of a pigeon. It entertained me endlessly while I would wait for a bus to take me home after school.
Firstly, I want to explain what the so-called “head-bobbing” movement really is. It is characterised by a rapid forward movement, called the thrust phase, which is followed by a hold phase. The backward movement is in fact an illusion. As stated by Necker (2007) “the head position is kept stable with regard to the environment while the body moves continuously forward. In this way head movements during walking are characterized by a hold phase and a thrust phase.”
So in layman’s terms: as a pigeon walks it thrusts its head forward and holds it while its body walks past that point and the pigeon then thrusts its head forward again. To us this looks as if the pigeon is moving its head forward and backward as it walks.
Most birds, pigeons included, have poor stereoscopic vision or depth perception (pigeons have lateral eyes with only minor binocular overlap). So, “during the hold phase [of the head-bob] the image of the surrounding world is stabilized for a short while on the retina, which increases the time to recognize and identify objects, especially moving ones” (Necker, 2007).
I think Wedderburn (2009) put it nicely when explaining why pigeons head-bob: “…it allows them to more clearly observe their surroundings for predators. The relative head holding phase provides a more stable picture; it would be far more difficult to identify very subtle movements of a cat if the bird’s eyes were moving relative to their surroundings.
“The head bob offers another advantage to birds: since their eyes are on either side of their heads, they have little binocular overlap (where both eyes can see the same object) resulting in poor depth vision. When head-bobbing, objects further away will seem to move more compared to objects that are close-up. … This is called ‘motion parallax’ and it allows birds to judge distances more effectively.”
The head-bob is not just a pigeon thing. Other species do it too.
The Orders of head-bobbing and non-bobbing species (well known species in brackets).
It is not really known yet why some species head-bob and others do not.
The following publications are an interesting read, but good luck as a few are quite long!
Troje, Nikolaus F., and Frost, Barrie J. (2000). Head-bobbing in pigeons: How stable is the hold phase? The Journal of Experimental biology 203: 935-940. Available online: http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Text/TrojeFrost00.pdf
When I met a specialist in biomechanics at a social function recently, I asked him if he knew the answer to a puzzle that has intrigued me for years: why do some birds bob their heads backwards and forwards as they walk? Pigeons and chickens are the best examples of this odd behaviour. Were their necks connected by sinews to their legs? What was going on?
He had no immediate answer for me, but like all good scientists, he has an appetite for knowledge and the determination to find the truth. He did some research, and this week, he sent me an email that explains what’s going on with this head-bobbing birds.
The subject was analysed by a Canadian scientist in 1978, using a high speed camera to measure the movement of a pigeon’s head, breast, wingtip and foot, when: (i) walking on the ground, (ii) when walking on a treadmill, and (iii) when being carried by a person who is walking along.
Firstly, by closely examining the bird walking on the ground, he confirmed the precise nature of the movement involved. This rhythmic action of the head bob involves a rapid forward ‘thrust’ of the head and what appears to be a slower backward movement. However, the backward movement of the head is an illusion, as the head in fact stays stationary relative to the bird’s surroundings, while the body actually ‘walks past it’. This backward moving phase would be better described as a ‘relative head-holding’ phase, where the head is held (almost) stationary relative to the bird’s surroundings.
When the pigeons walked on a treadmill (which must have taken some time to train) the head bobbing stopped, since the pigeon’s body was not moving relative to its surroundings.
When the person carried the pigeon while walking, the thrust and relative head-holding phases reappeared as the pigeon was again moving relative to its surroundings.
Other scientists took this work further, training birds to walk on the ground when blindfolded. These birds did not bob their heads, further confirming that the head bob is prompted by seeing the surrounding environment moving relative to the bird.
So why do birds use this thrust and relative head-holding action? The best guess is that it allows them to more clearly observe their surroundings for predators. The relative head holding phase provides a more stable picture; it would be far more difficult to identify very subtle movements of a cat if the bird’s eyes were moving relative to their surroundings.
This is easy to show. Ask a willing assistant to stand with a bright object in their hand (representing a predator) while you stand 10m away. See if you can detect when your assistant moves the object just a few centimetres (about 5 cm is observable). Ask them to repeat this while you are running parallel to them and you will see it is nearly impossible to identify when the bright object is being moved this small amount.
The head bob offers another advantage to birds: since their eyes are on either side of their heads, they have little binocular overlap (where both eyes can see the same object) resulting in poor depth vision. When head-bobbing, objects further away will seem to move more compared to objects that are close-up. (Try holding your finger in front of you and move your head from side to side, and you’ll see what I mean.) This is called “motion parallax” and it allows birds to judge distances more effectively.
I thought that it would impress readers if I could duplicate the scientific research in my own back garden, so last night I took some video footage of one of my own hens walking on her own, then being carried by my daughter.
It’s a good demonstration of the walking head bob, but it’s less easy to see the bob when the bird is being carried.
Scientists are willing to study anything; they are sometimes driven simply to understand, even if there appears to be no real benefit to us. And now you too know why hens use that much-mimicked head-bobbing chicken-walk.
