The secret life of pigeons

Pity the poor pigeon. Pigeon-holed, as it were, rarely given its due. Sunday morning's newest contributor is bird watcher, or birder, Christian Cooper. Meet Dinosaur, the 17-foot-tall, two-ton aluminum pigeon. For the next year and a half, its perch will be New York City's High Line. Pigeons and birds, as we know, are what remains of dinosaurs. So what if we transform a pigeon and we bring it into a scale of a Tyrannosaurus rex? Artist Ivan Arbote showed us Dinosaur as a work in progress. Maybe we're looking now at what pigeons see from us. Maybe we're now the pigeons and we're the ones running away and then they're like the dominant ones. I don't know what city you live in, but pigeons don't run away in our city. They're like, come over! Arbote says it's about time pigeons get the hero treatment. Dinosaur is like a very serious proposition of what could be a monument that doesn't celebrate man, a war, a victory, but that celebrates a bird that's been with us since forever. But the project, like the bird itself, plays to mixed reviews. People either love them or hate them, but still, it's a very iconic animal of New York City. And New York isn't the only city paying tribute to them. Earlier this year, the London Museum unveiled its controversial new logo. Why do you think so many people are not too keen on pigeons? My personal belief is they don't see them, they don't watch them, they don't understand them. Rita McMahon, who founded the Wild Bird Fund, a rehab center for injured wildlife in New York City, They have their own world out there. points to a put-down from the 1960s. When the city was in its most disrepair, Hoving, who was the head of the Parks Department, he called pigeons flying rats. Rats with wings. Yes, that's true. And it stuck. That was terrible. Early European settlers brought pigeons to America to breed as food. Some became feral. And as we built cities with tall buildings, these natural cliff dwellers found themselves right at home. They like high places. We're giving them cliffs. The canyons of New York, we are their cliffs now. During both world wars, pigeons became valuable partners thanks to their visual acuity and homing ability. They were war heroes. They received more medals of honor for saving lives than any other animal. And so this would be what a paratrooper would connect to their parachute. They would leap out of the plane, come down to the ground, and they have their pigeon to be able to send messages. McMahon says pigeons score off the charts on visual intelligence tests. They can recognize words. They can recognize when it's a garbage word. Those letters don't go together. They know landmarks. They remember things. They remember people. And they're the main wildlife that people get to see. If we can get people to look and understand pigeons, it's their gateway bird to seeing nature more. At New York's Wild Bird Fund, It's alright. more than half of the 12,000 birds they receive each year are pigeons. Beautiful red coloration on these two. Some are just babies. And a handful, unreleasable into the wild, get adopted. Look at you, so cute. Look how pretty she is. Go was one of those few. Jeffrey Jones, her pet parent, says she's one spoiled pigeon. She is like a house-broken pet. Like, she loves to just lay around and preen and watch TV. I mean, I'm not joking. Watch TV? Yes. What is her favorite program? Criterion Channel. Oh, so she's a very elite bird with refined taste. Yes, refined taste. Jones, a high fashion photographer, volunteers at the Wild Bird Fund and takes pictures of their pigeons, too. In 2020, during COVID, he and his wife, Jada, fostered Go. They never intended to become pigeon parents. But when they gave her back... I know this sounds crazy, but I noticed that she was looking sort of sluggish in the cage and she seemed really depressed. Like, this bird is not doing well by itself. I said, I'm taking Go. She's not doing well. She's going to die there. So, like, I took her. You're moved by this. Yeah. To your credit, your humanity and Jada's humanity won out. And now I'm married with pigeons. Pigeons like Go can live around 15 years. In the wild, their lives are substantially shorter. They celebrated her fourth birthday this past July. Go is amazing. In every single way. Like, I don't know, I wake up every day. It's Go's world, you know? We're just living in it.