Superdove

by Humphries, Courtney

• ISBN13: 9780061259166
• ISBN10: 0061259160
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Why do we see pigeons as lowly urban pests and how did they become such common city dwellers? Courtney Humphries traces the natural history of the pigeon, recounting how these shy birds that once made their homes on the sparse cliffs of sea coasts came to dominate our urban public spaces. While detailing this evolution, Humphries introduces us to synanthropy: The concept that animals can become dependent on humans without ceasing to be wild; they can adapt to the cityscape as if it were a field or a forest.Superdove simultaneously explores the pigeon's cultural transformation, from its life in the dovecotes of ancient Egypt to its service in the trenches of World War I, to its feats within the pigeon-racing societies of today. While the dove is traditionally recognized as a symbol of peace, the pigeon has long inspired a different sort of fetishistic devotion from breeders, eaters, and artists-and from those who recognized and exploited the pigeon's astounding abilities. Because of their fecundity, pigeons were symbols of fertility associated with Aphrodite, while their keen ability to find their way home made them ideal messengers and even pilots.Their usefulness largely forgotten, today's pigeons have become as ubiquitous and reviled as rats. But Superdove reveals something more surprising: By using pigeons for our own purposes, we humans have changed their evolution. And in doing so, we have helped make pigeons the ideal city dwellers they are today. In the tradition of Rats, the book that made its namesake rodents famous, Superdove is the fascinating story of the pigeon's journey from the wild to the city-the home they'll never leave.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
The Pigeon's Progress	p. 1
Invited Guests	p. 7
Darwin's Metaphor	p. 23
Hopeful Monsters	p. 39
Homing	p. 63
Hunt and Peck	p. 81
Escape of the Superdoves	p. 99
A Squab Is Born	p. 115
The Urban Habitat	p. 129
Defining Pigeons	p. 139
Pigeon Mothers	p. 153
Origin	p. 173
Bibliography	p. 185
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Superdove
How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World

One

The Pigeon's Progress

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives. Annie Dillard

I first really noticed pigeons when I traveled in Europe after college. I sat in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, where it was impossible not to notice them. They gathered in a gray, shuddering mass, an ocean of bodies at once marvelous and disgusting. Children, I noticed, tended to see what was marvelous, to step into that vibrating pool of pigeons and watch the chaos as the birds parted around them. Adults were more on the side of disgust; they edged away from the birds and thought of crowds and filth and disease. But in spite of its sanitary implications, the sight of that throng of pigeons was certainly arresting, a muddled swarm of life in an otherwise genteel old city.

I had many opportunities to watch pigeons as a tourist that summer. I noticed how the pigeons moved, how the males puffed themselves up and drove the females in circles around the piazzas of Italy, and in London's squares, and in the public gardens of Paris. Amid the bustle of these great cities, pigeons were carrying on their lives, feeding and procreating as resolutely as any of the human residents.

A few years later, I took a trip with two friends to Thailand; it was my first visit to Asia and the farthest I had ever traveled. Walking across a plaza in Bangkok on the first day, we ran into a celebration for the Queen's birthday. Her portrait soared over a soundstage, where children in bright outfits performed traditional Thai dances for a small crowd. It was the sort of scene a traveler loves to stumble upon. But in the background I noticed something else: groups of slate-gray pigeons wandering through the square. There is a particular kind of disappointment a traveler feels upon realizing how similar one city is to another. Not only is crossing the globe a simple matter of hours spent on a plane, but the cities are adorned with some of the same banks and fast-food restaurants, the same universal traffic signs, the same modern buildings and movie theaters. And, in this case, the same birds. I began to think of pigeons not just as companions on my travels but as symbols of homogeneity.

Later, my conception of pigeons as identical gray blobs populating the planet was challenged by reading Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. I was surprised to find that he chose to begin that famous book with a lengthy chapter about pigeons; for some reason, Darwin had used these birds to illustrate an argument about the incredible diversity of life, ascribing to pigeons a complexity I had never considered before.

I had never learned a thing about pigeons in school or watched a documentary about them or read about them in books. Pigeons were a fact I had taken for granted. They were background scenery or extras in movies: so common they were invisible. They were at once familiar and completely unknown. Inspired by Darwin, I began to investigate where these birds came from and how they came to appear in such abundance in every city I ever visited; this book is the result of rethinking pigeons.

Pigeons have long been familiar to people, but their image has not always been as a ubiquitous urban pest. Their Latin name, Columba livia, means a dove the color of lead. At one time, the words "pigeon" and "dove" were used interchangeably; once you know that, you realize how very different Columba livia's image once was. There is good evidence that much of the iconic imagery of doves we still recognize today was originally based on the same species as our pesky street pigeons, C. livia. The British historian Jean Hansell has published books exhaustively listing the various appearances of pigeons in iconography of the past. They were fertility symbols associated with the ancient goddesses Ishtar, Aphrodite, and Venus. They are the most frequently mentioned birds in the Old Testament, where they were often used as sacrifices and messengers. In Christianity, doves came to symbolize the Holy Spirit itself.

But "pigeon" and "dove" gradually came to acquire very different meanings. Perhaps Shakespeare is to blame; he almost always used "pigeon" and "dove" in different ways. Pigeons appeared in practical roles, as food, letter-carriers, and sometimes as symbols of fidelity and care of children. They were also known for their unusual digestive systems that lacked a gall bladder; thus Hamlet castigates himself for being "pigeon-liver'd" for his want of gall. Doves, however, were equated with peace, modesty, patience, love, and other noble ideals. Since then, the meanings of "pigeon" and "dove" have only grown farther apart. A dove, not a pigeon, brought Noah an olive leaf. We never talk of pigeons of peace or dove droppings on statues. "Dove" is a pleasant enough title to grace chocolate bars and soap, while "pigeon" has no marketing appeal.

While the images of doves continue to decorate Christmas cards, the real birds that once inspired that image have been cast out of such heavenly associations. But even as city birds, pigeons were once romantic; old photographs of urban scenes often show pigeons flying through streets, denizens of a new world of bridges and train stations and smokestacks. But just as big cities have lost some of their romance, so have pigeons. When Woody Allen famously called them "rats with wings" in Stardust Memories, their lot as urban pests was solidified. At best, pigeons appear these days in New Yorker cartoons as cheeky city dwellers; they brave traffic and ride the subways and befriend old ladies on benches. At worst, they are filthy poop machines that spread disease, and freeloaders that scrounge through trash for their meals. They drain money from cities; industries have emerged to help people repel and kill them. No longer a lofty abstraction, pigeons have become all too real, a constant presence of flesh and feathers and shit. Doves are something pure and lovely, pigeons the rough reality.

Superdove
How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World. Copyright © by Courtney Humphries. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... and the World by Courtney Humphries
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.