We all pass the humble city, or feral pigeon without maybe thinking about where they came from. It is almost impossible to calculate how many feral pigeons there are in Britain but there are less than we think. Familiarly, coupled with many pigeons often being congregated in small areas of a city often makes one think that every city is awash with more pigeons than the city can cope with. But ecology and population dynamics are not ideal for wildlife in our urban areas. With that, best estimates are around 500,000 breeding pairs across the UK, with maybe 2-5,000 in most cities. To put that into context there are around 4-5 million breeding pairs of blackbird, possibly as unlike the blackbird, the feral pigeon is closely related to human settlements, not the wider countryside where the woodpigeon or stock dove are more numerous. Although they can have their problems, disease carriers, seen as pests, I like pigeons as they bring a little bit of the wild into our urbanised areas. Their ancestors are the rock dove of which just a few hundred now cling to a precarious existence in the remote cliffs along the western side of Scotland and a few islands. Humans domesticated these birds over time and it is from that domestic stock that our feral pigeon derives, from escapees. So next time you walk past a small flock of pigeons as I did today, just enjoy that feeling of a little bit of the wild being brought into the well ordered concrete city.
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