Excerpt from Pigeons by Andrew D. Blechman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The vast majority of today’s feral pigeons can be traced to the proliferation of these dovecotes across Eurasia. Wealthy Romans were particularly fond of pigeon meat, so dovecotes were introduced throughout their empire (as were garlic, asparagus, and other delicacies). Since dovecotes are designed to allow pigeons to come and go as they please, some pigeons inevitably wandered off. Roman buildings and monuments were also populated with feral pigeons, much like the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square in Venice and London’s Trafalgar Square today. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets mention the domestication of pigeons over five thousand years ago, as do Egyptian hieroglyphics. In human terms, the pigeon’s most useful skill - its innate ability to “home” - was perhaps first recognized and utilized by ancient Mediterranean seafarers. Although the bird often dwells on coastal cliffs, it has an aversion to large bodies of water and always flies inland in search of food. A bird released from a ship will quickly orient itself to land, and early sailors undoubtedly followed suit.

It was only a matter of time before humans learned to further manipulate the bird’s homing skills and use them for delivering messages. Egyptians may have been the first to use pigeons as carriers when they sent birds in the four cardinal directions to announce the ascension of a new pharaoh to the throne. Likewise, messages regarding flood levels were sent up and down the Nile by means of an early pigeon post. King Solomon is said to have made use of a pigeon post for critical messaging, and archaeologists have found underground pigeon coops in Israel from this period that held an estimated 120,000 birds.

By the eighth century B.C., pigeons were used regularly by the Greeks to carry messages, particularly results of the Olympic games to the various city-states. As impractical as the use of birds in relaying messages may sound, consider the alternative. According to Greek legend, it took most of a day for the news of the Persian defeat at Marathon to reach Athens - a mere 26.2 miles  - and then the runner died from exhaustion.

By 500 B.C., the emperor of China was regularly receiving messages in Beijing from outer provinces. A bird could deliver a message in as many hours as it took a horse and rider days. Hannibal employed pigeons during his siege of Rome, and Julius Caesar utilized them to relay messages from his military campaigns in Gaul. Genghis Khan and his grandson Kublai Khan created a pigeon post that spanned one sixth of the world. For thousands of years, the fastest way to send a message was by pigeon. They were the avian equivalent to today’s Fed Ex, and the governments and militaries of every major historical power exploited them as such.



Throughout history, the bird’s unusual talents and fecundity earned it respect. But it was probably the bird’s affectionate nature that earned it adoration and made it integral to religious worship since the beginnings of human civilization in Mesopotamia.

In many ways, pigeons exhibit the tender traits we most admire in ourselves. The Jewish Bible’s Song of Solomon speaks of the bird lovingly, in anthropomorphic terms: “O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.”

When two pigeons court, they link beaks in a manner that looks a lot like kissing. The birds are actually exchanging food. The female playfully places her beak inside the male’s beak to signal that she expects the male to care for her and, soon, their children. By accepting the female’s beak - and this is where we humans differ - the male is accepting his impending responsibility and not just recreational nookie. When pigeons mate, they mate for life. The sexual act itself is relatively gentle and completely consensual. A duet of affectionate cooing follows, as well as a careful preening of each other’s feathers. In a demonstration of true gender equality, the parents share domestic duties and spend an equal amount of time sitting on the eggs and feeding their young. A happy couple can raise as many as twelve to eighteen babies a year. This cooperative behavior and frequent mating, coupled with the bird’s ability to live peacefully in large flocks, led to its reputation for fruitfulness and purity of spirit. One of the earliest known mother-goddesses was the Sumerian, and later Babylonian, goddess Ishtar, “queen of heaven and earth and of the evening star.” She is often depicted either holding a pigeon or as the winged bird herself. The Phoenician goddess of love and fertility, Astarte, was also symbolically represented as a pigeon, as were the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Roman goddess Venus. In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the Hebrew Bible by hundreds of years, there is also a great flood in which the pigeon plays the role of messenger. The rock dove’s message - of subsiding waters and thus new beginnings and new hope - lent the pigeon its role as the bird of peace.

Excerpted from Pigeons © 2006 by Andrew Blechman, and reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press.