Josh Freed: A paean to the pigeon, the bag lady of the bird world

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Homeowners chase them with brooms. Kids throw rocks at them. Professionals are quietly hired to murder them.

Yet nobody cares.

Pity the pigeon, a true Montrealer that rarely gets his due. Other birds get pointed at with glee and admiration: “Look honey! it’s a blue jay/starling/hawk/yellow-bellied sapsucker!”

But pigeons get no attention, apart from the occasional kick.

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While most birds head south for the winter, the pigeon is left behind, getting little help from his fellow Quebecers. The SPCA looks after dogs and cats, and everyone feeds the squirrels, but the pigeon has few pals.

It’s time someone said a kind word about this much maligned bird who shares our city streets. So here is my paean to the pigeon.

First, who exactly is this awkward bird?

Its history goes back 5,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia. For centuries afterward, pigeons were trained to deliver important messages quickly: the air mail and email of the day.

Some became decorated Second World War heroes, like G.I. Joe, a pigeon who delivered a message that saved an Italian village.

Like most of us, the pigeon is a recent immigrant to Canada.

It arrived with Champlain in the 1600s, brought to be raised as food. But in the 1800s a pigeon on your plate lost its allure, and farmers kicked them into the streets.

Today most are homeless: the bag ladies of the bird world, a breadcrumb from starvation.

They prowl our city’s most popular spots like perpetual tourists, from Phillips Square to the Big O and Old Port, looking for leftovers.

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While there is no official pigeon census there are probably more than 300,000 in Montreal, given our city’s population.

They survive on our leftovers, or occasional handouts from the elderly, who often get more attention from the birds than their own species.

But apart from these pigeon-feeders even most animal lovers shun the pigeon.

Under wildlife protection acts, it’s illegal to hunt several hundred species of bird in Quebec. Only a dozen birds are left unprotected, but not surprisingly the pigeon is one of them, joining other ornithological outcasts like the raven, crow and brown-haired cowbird.

But at least these birds are specifically “excluded” from wildlife protection, while there isn’t a word about the pigeon. The pigeon is a non-bird. You can murder it at will all year round and the law won’t touch you.

Why is the pigeon a pariah? Largely because of pigeon poop.

Unlike most animals, pigeons poop after every meal, and they eat often, perhaps 20 times a day. So when 300,000 birds do it 20 times a day, it adds up: six million poops a day, or over two billion a year.

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Most of it seems to land on our city’s historic monuments, or my windshield.

It also lands on Montreal balconies, where many pigeons squat, without a lease. When banded together they’re the bikers of the bird world: lawless gangs that think they own the world and your porch.

I once spent six months fighting a pigeon invasion on my back balcony, by a nasty bunch of bird bullies. Their leader was a big brutish bird I nicknamed Atilla, who wouldn’t back down even when I came at him with a broom.

I tried everything to chase them off: hallucinogenic pinwheels, sharp floor tacks, even rolling basketballs down the balcony frequently. But nothing worked.

In the end I had to put up vast floor-to-ceiling balcony netting that separated us from the outside world. We were the ones who were caged.

But years later I’ve forgiven and forgotten you, Atilla, as long as you don’t return.

Why else is the pigeon an outcast? Dogs and cats are sly creatures, who snuggle in your lap, rub your cheek and touch your heart.

But the pigeon pays you scant attention, unless you’re clutching a loaf of bread. It’s a difficult creature to love.

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So why am I praising this ostracized bird?

In a downtown core where it’s easy to be prey, the pigeon is one of a few species that survives on its own, along with chipmunks, squirrels and us.

It’s a pest, but it’s our pest. Experts think pigeons live in cities mostly because they’re comfortable around humans after centuries around us, even if we’re no longer comfortable around them.

Like their brethren the white gulls, many are “french fry birds” who’ve learned to time meal runs with rush hour at the nearest Lafleur’s.

They fight it out with our motorists, inhale our smog and battle our exterminators, yet can still live to a robust 15.

The pigeon is a true Montrealer who lives here because it wants to, not because it’s on a leash. So spare a kind a word and occasional bread crumb for the this avian outcast.

No, a pudgy pigeon trundling down the sidewalk and waddling into flight doesn’t have the grace of a (protected) Canada goose.

But unlike that goose, our pigeons don’t just vacation here in summer and fly South when things get rough.

They stick it out all winter, which is more than I can say for most of my friends.

joshfreed49@gmail.com

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