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There is much more to the pigeon than meets the eye (and more to their vision than we once thought).  This fascinating video by True Facts Educational delves into the bobbing heads question.  The answer is quite simple - they are only trying to keep their world still.  This video goes into much more detail than that, of course, but this is only the beginning.  It turns out that there are a lot of questions we could ask about pigeons, but are too distracted by our daily lives to go and seek the answer.  So, what other questions does this video ask?

First and foremost, something that we have seen countless times.  We all recognise the signs when pigeons are getting amorous.  There is the head bowing and the tail feather fanned out – and the female trying to get away at all costs.  The signals the male gives are very similar to those he displays when feeling aggressive, but they are part of an elaborate courtship dance.  You know he's got it right when the female allows a little beaking to go on (yes, you read that correctly – watch the video to see it in action!).   It isn’t some kind of pigeon French-kissing, though – it enables the giving of a gift.   That raises another question – why do their nests so often look like a hopeless mess, like they haven’t bothered to make much of an effort to give their eggs a place to call home?  There’s a good reason for that, too…

One thing that genuinely surprised me is the fact that most pigeons mate for life.  Their courtship rituals always look so random to me – but perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention!  When I watch them (with some amusement) in the local park, it all looks a little random, but their behaviour is far more sophisticated than it first appears. Watch the video below and discover much more about the humble pigeon – it might surprise you just how complex the behaviour of this bird we all take for granted truly is. 

This morning, as I walked to the shops, I spotted a crow.  That wasn’t hard because it was making a loud cawing sound – a proper South East London crow, indeed.  Perhaps there was a cat around, maybe it was trying to locate its mate, or it could have been defending its territory.  I’m not sure what was going on, but one thing was for sure – this crow was perched very precariously on a sapling in a planter.  Perhaps six foot tall, the young tree has been damaged (perhaps by the crow?), meaning that a bird, if it lands elegantly enough, can perch atop it.  Yet what bird would want to do that? This one, obviously.  I didn’t see it land, but the level of expertise it must have taken is astonishing.  I say this because I can’t even do a three-point turn very well, so I can’t imagine calculating angles with height involved too.

Still pondering these avian acrobatics, I reached home and popped the eggs I had just bought into the fridge. I discovered a single egg at its back, and I decided that, since the crow had given me a visual treat, I would give the ones that haunt my garden an edible one. Now, this isn’t something I do often.  Although I do like to see the bigger birds in my garden (the rivalries between the crows and the magpies are legendary for their riotousness, noisiness and general length!) I generally do not feed birds at all. I used to, but then read up on it and discovered that it could produce an over-reliance on feeders, not to mention that lots of birds congregating together isn’t necessarily good for their general health.