As I read more about the Columbidae, though, I came to appreciate pigeons for more than just their beauty. Their big appetites are crucial to the health of forests around the globe. Researchers observing fig trees in Malaysia once found that green pigeons consumed far more fruit than any other animal in the jungle, visiting some trees more often than all other animals combined. Most animals defecate seeds near the parent tree, but pigeons are long-distance fliers who retain seeds in their guts longer than other frugivores. Pigeons’ ability to fly across oceans is probably why common species of trees grow on the many isolated islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. After the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa destroyed all life on nearby islands in 1883, a pigeon was the first frugivore to return. Any seeds in its droppings would have helped regenerate fruit-bearing trees.
Wood pigeons are the animals most responsible for transporting large seeds like olive pits and cherry stones around Europe. A wood pigeon on my balcony could down six or seven whole peanuts in their shells, one after the other. The more I watched them, the more I realized they were changing the city’s composition. Unlike city pigeons, who seem hardened by centuries of urban living, wood pigeons have not yet lost the innocence and ambition of fresh arrivals from the countryside. They’ve learned to scavenge breadcrumbs on the sidewalks like their city cousins, but they also eat fruits and seeds from dozens of exotic, ornamental trees. Some wood pigeons reverse-commute, sleeping overnight in cities but flying daily to forage farmland grains.
Ecologists coined the word “synurbanization” to describe the adaptation of wild plants and animals to cities. And in some ways, it’s a two-way street. The birds drew my attention to treetops, cemeteries, overgrown lots and other places that the writer Richard Mabey calls “the unofficial countryside,” in which wood pigeons’ coos became soothing notes in a Berlin soundscape of shrieking sirens and wall-rattling techno beats.
Wood pigeons have helped me to look at city pigeons more kindly. Whether they’re nesting behind shop signs or pecking at detritus on the street, they seem less like parasites than pioneers who’ve taken up the challenge of rewilding the grossest corners of humanity. They’ve also reminded me how, though we tend to think of the urban and the wild in juxtaposition, superimposition — layering one thing on top of another so the ways they’re entwined become visible — is more often the case. We don’t need to escape to the woods for contact with wildlife; cities are habitats, too, governed by ecology and evolution. To observe this and to name our wild neighbors is to embrace our natural surroundings. For me, watching wood pigeons is a reminder that familiarity need not breed contempt; it can also plant the seeds of renewed curiosity.
Ben Crair is a science-and-travel writer based in Berlin.