Learning to love pigeons again

The Washington Post

HUNDREDS of men were pinned down in France’s Argonne Forest, surrounded by the enemy. They’d been fighting furiously for six days, and now they were taking friendly fire from their would-be rescuers.

It was 1918, and a troop of Allied soldiers who would later be called the “Lost Battalion” had one last hope: A pigeon named Cher Ami, who carried a note with the soldiers’ coordinates. When he arrived at headquarters, Cher Ami had been blinded in one eye by shrapnel, was nearly missing a leg and had been shot through the breast by a German bullet. He had flown 25 miles in 25 minutes, and the message he delivered helped save nearly 200 lives.

For most of human history, pigeons have been both pets and partners of people, but sometime in the last half-century, the relationship soured. Today, pigeons are often ignored at best and reviled at worst, but sociologists and animal activists think we ought to appreciate them again.

People and pigeons first formed a relationship thousands of years ago in the Middle East, says Rosemary Mosco, author of “A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird.” “They were domesticated before the dawn of recorded writing,” she says, from a species called the rock dove. “We know Genghis Khan was using pigeons to communicate with his army. The results of the first Olympic Games were carried by pigeon. For thousands of years, these animals were venerated by kings and queens.”

And as people spread around the world, so did pigeons. “Every pigeon you see in any city today is a descendant of a domesticated pigeon,” Mosco says.

Pigeons were a source of food and fertilizer, and breeding them was once a popular hobby. “We were breeding them sort of the way we breed show dogs; to look cool and fly cool and make weird sounds,” Mosco says. They represented an art and, in many cases, a science.

“If you go back and look at Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species,’ the first 70 or so pages are about pigeons,” says Colin Jerolmack, a professor of environmental studies and sociology at New York University and author of “The Global Pigeon.” “They were so popular in Victorian England, Darwin’s editor actually said, ‘Why don’t you just get rid of that other stuff - a.k.a. natural selection - and just make this a pigeon book.’”

Cher Ami wasn’t the only heroic pigeon. In World War I, pigeons employed by British and American forces completed more than 10,000 flights. During the Second World War, British citizens donated 200,000 birds to the National Pigeon Service. Nearly three dozen were later awarded the Dickin Medal for service to their country.

Their innate ability to find their way back to their nest - also called a “homing” instinct - even from great distances made them useful in wartime. It’s believed that a sense called magnetoreception allows pigeons to navigate using the planet’s magnetic field. But while scientists are still working to understand how homing works, the why is part of what makes pigeons so endearing. They mate for life, and as partners they’re affectionate, attentive and - most importantly - deeply loyal. They will fly for hundreds of miles, over continents and oceans and through rain and darkness, artillery and bullets, just to get home to their mate.

- In the postwar period, pigeons became much less important. The rise of factory farming saw squab (the culinary term for an immature pigeon) replaced by chickens, which are simpler to raise in large numbers. Rapid advances in communication made pigeons obsolete as messengers. Even their guano was no longer necessary.

“We learned to manufacture synthetic fertilizer from bomb making,” Jerolmack says.

Once pigeons’ utility waned, so did humans’ affinity for them. In the 1950s, New York City experienced an outbreak of psittacosis, a disease that spreads from birds to people.

Barring the collapse of modern communications networks, we won’t ever need pigeons the same way we once did, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate them again, Mosco says.

“They had a pretty incredible career, and then we just sort of started hating them pretty recently,” she says. “So it shouldn't be that hard to switch back to liking them, right?”

The pigeon’s image has been bolstered a bit in recent weeks. The London Museum unveiled a new logo with a white pigeon standing over a splat of glittery guano, and New York City’s High Line installed a giant pigeon sculpture by Colombian-French artist Iván Argote.

“I feel like step one is changing people’s attitudes,” Mosco says. “You can donate to the groups that adopt them. And if you’re considering a pet, it doesn’t hurt to consider a pigeon, because the shelters are just full of them.”

Anna Morris, the director of wildlife ambassador programs at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, keeps six rescue pigeons in her backyard. If you’re thinking of adopting, it’s important to know “they can live for 18 or 20 years,” she says, “so you have to be in it for the long haul.”