The puzzle of pigeons

I can't say that this book came out of a long fascination with pigeons. I had never been a birder or raised pigeons as pets or had more than the usual city-dweller's interactions with them. Instead, it began with a pretty casual observation: when I did some traveling abroad in my early 20s I noticed that every city I visited seemed to have pigeons. They all looked basically the same to me. Later, I read Charles Darwin's Origin of Species for a class, I was struck by its long opening section detailing the shapes and sizes of domestic pigeons. Somehow, those two observations lodged themselves in the back of my mind.

When I was in a grad program in science writing at MIT, I was given an assignment to write a long article. The catch: the topic couldn't be something newsworthy. While my usual instinct as a science writer is to track the latest trend or discovery or innovation, instead I had come up with something that I wanted to write about simply because it was interesting. As I was trolling through my brain for topics, those two observations about pigeons surfaced. I didn't know how they were connected—how those homogeneous urban birds had anything to do with Darwin and evolution—but it was enough to try to find out.

So the topic of pigeons began as a puzzle I wanted to solve. With a little research, I uncovered loads of fascinating stuff about these birds—their history as domestic animals, the breeding of bizarre fancy pigeons and Darwin's interest in them, B.F. Skinner's plans to create a pigeon-guided missile. And of course, the ability of pigeons to live in so many places in the world and thrive in the seemingly inhospitable environment of an inner city. Pigeons turned out to be much more interesting than I thought.

After I uncovered this material, I started spending a lot of time looking at pigeons in Boston where I live. I see pigeons literally every day; they are all around my neighborhood. So this research was not difficult! I watched them hunt for food, build nests, mate, care for and raise their young. 

Over time, I began to appreciate pigeons as more than an intellectual puzzle. You see, I grew up in a city but had ready access to mountains and nature all around me; in comparison, I've often felt confined and exiled from nature in Boston. Watching pigeons in my neighborhood revealed a whole world under my nose that I was blind to. The gloomy maze of concrete and brick (as I sometimes saw it) became a habitat for wildlife.

I can understand why some people find pigeons to be a nuisance—my car gets crapped on just like everyone else's. But I can honestly say that I enjoy seeing pigeons everyday, and my world would be a diminished place without them.

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