Pigeon (Animal)
Barbara Allen
Language: English
Pages: 152
ISBN: 1861895135
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Our frequent urban companion, cooing in the eaves of train stations or scavenging underfoot for breadcrumbs and discarded French fries, the pigeon has many detractors—and even some fans. Written out of love for and fascination with this humble yet important bird, Barbara Allen's Pigeon explores its cultural significance, as well as its similarities to and differences from its close counterpart, the dove. While the dove is seen as a symbol of love, peace, and goodwill, the pigeon is commonly perceived as a filthy, ill-mannered flying rodent, a "rat with wings."
Readers will find in Pigeon an enticing exploration of the historical and contemporary bonds between humans and these two unique and closely related birds. For polluting statues and architecture, the pigeon has earned a bad reputation, but Barbara Allen offers several examples of the bird's importance—as a source of food and fertilizer, a bearer of messages during times of war, a pollution monitor, and an aid to Charles Darwin in his pivotal research on evolutionary theory. Allen also comments on the literary love and celebration of pigeons and doves in the work of such writers and poets as Shakespeare, Dickens, Beatrix Potter, Proust, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Along the way, Allen corrects the many stereotypes about pigeons in the hope that the rich history of one of the oldest human-animal partnerships will be both admired and celebrated.
results were revealing; both the pigeons and the humans responded similarly, with one exception: their responses to Vivaldi. All four pigeons differed in the same way, consistently pecking at the ‘Stravinsky’ key (that is, contemporary) rather than at the ‘Bach’ key. With the exception of the piece by Vivaldi, the pigeons and the human group responded similarly to the categorization of musical stimuli: ‘Therefore the pigeon’s response to complex auditory events may be more like the human’s than
the Mocker and Big Tom, John Silver, Colonel’s Lady, Spike, Lord Adelaide and the Poilu. 68 Miriam Rothschild, Butterfly Cooing like a Dove (London, 1991), p. 108. 69 Gardiner, The Animals’ War, p. 102. 70 Hitler wasn’t a vegetarian; the myth of Hitler’s vegetarianism was carefully formulated by Nazi Germany’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. In Nazi Germany, vegetarian societies were banned; see Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka (New York, 2002), pp. 126–8. 71 The childrens’ book
other pigeons, and not only for reproduction. The courtship ritual for pigeons is orderly and complex. Head nodding and the spreading of the tail are courtship behaviours common to all pigeon and dove species. This display is used by the male to attract a mate. During the nodding, the birds will look directly into the face of the other. If the hen is interested, she begins nodding her head in the cock’s direction. The male begins to peck behind his wings, conveying interest in her. If she remains
(London, 1996) Kligerman, Jack, A Fancy for Pigeons (New York, 1978) König, Karl, Swans and Storks, Sparrows and Doves (Edinburgh, 1987) Kovner, Abba, My Little Sister (London, 1971) Levi, Wendell Mitchell, The Pigeon (Columbia, SC, 1941) —, Making Pigeons Pay (New York, 1946) Lochhead, Marion, The Battle of the Birds and other Celtic Tales (Edinburgh, 1981) Marshall, Rob, Health Programmes for Racing and Show Pigeons (Carlingford, 1997) Martin, David, Mister P. and his Remarkable Flight
This, of course, does not mean that the pigeon indicates which he prefers; as far as the researchers can tell, this plays no part; it is more to do with observation, which involves, in all tests bar the first, colour, as well as thickness of brushstroke and the recognition of objects in the paintings. Although Impressionism aims to record fleeting ‘impressions’, especially of natural light, it does not set out to represent or to record reality, a task more suited to photography. Having said this,