Pigeon by Barbara Allen

This is my first of the Reaktion series of monographs on individual species of animals and I was pleasantly surprised, I expected the book to be quite slight and received a lovely heavy 230 odd page book that fits nicely in the hand and is full of colour and monochrome illustrations and photographs.

Pigeons are a much maligned species, villified as 'rats with wings', as pests in interesting contrast to their albino versions, doves. They live in such close communion with us, exchanging their natural habitat of cliff faces for the vertical faces of our cities, that they are easily overlooked. They are assumed to be stupid and dirty, but the truth is very different.

Allen takes us through chapters on the physiology and natural history of pigeons and doves, their social life, intelligence, the physical mutability which made them beloved of Darwin and other pigeon fanciers, and their ability to home. She identifies the history of doves and pigeons in literature, religion and mythology and examines their relationship with humans, as food and as messengers. Her final chapter is on the pigeon species humans have driven to extinction: the dodo, solitaires, and the passenger pigeon, not from competition but rather wholesale slaughter.

There is some repetition between chapters, but in all this was a really enjoyable education, pigeons have companioned humans since the beginning of built civilization and this book elegantly explores how the relationship between bird and human has evolved right up to the present day.