It’s one of the city’s great tiny mysteries. We live surrounded by pigeons; they obviously breed, and yet their chicks seem to be nowhere to be found. You’d think pigeons were born fully grown, right next to a tube entrance, with an innate understanding of how café terraces work.
The reality is much simpler, but quite fascinating: baby pigeons stay hidden until they look almost exactly like their parents.
The rock pigeon, from which most urban pigeons are descended, originally nested in cliffs and rock cavities. Our cities have provided them with a vast substitute: cornices, ledges, bell towers, bridges, derelict buildings, ducts and hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. In short, a whole parallel world of architecture that we rarely notice.
This is where pigeons build their nests. And unlike chicks, which we tend to imagine running after their mothers straight away, young pigeons spend several weeks in the nest. They are born tiny, looking quite different from the plump pigeons we see in our town squares: with visible skin, sparse yellowish down, a large beak and a frankly prehistoric appearance.
Their parents look after them in a rather remarkable way. In pigeons, both the male and the female produce an extremely nutritious substance in their crop, commonly known as ‘crop milk’. The young are fed this during their first few days before their diet gradually changes.
And that is precisely why we miss them.
When a young pigeon finally leaves its nest, usually around four to five weeks after hatching, it is already almost as big as an adult and has most of its plumage. To a passer-by who spots it on the pavement, it’s simply… a pigeon.
However, now that you know the trick, you might be able to spot them. Young pigeons often have duller plumage, and their eyes and beaks haven’t quite taken on the characteristic appearance of adults yet. They may also seem a little more hesitant in their movements.
So there really are thousands of baby pigeons flying overhead. We simply hardly ever see them when they’re actually babies.
And this little urban mystery ultimately tells us something rather lovely about our cities: we think we know them because we walk through them every day, yet just a few metres from our windows lies a whole invisible world.
Next time you see fifty pigeons in a square, take a closer look.
There might be a baby among them.
It’s just that it already looks almost like an adult.
The pigeon has long since discovered the best way to get through adolescence: don’t let anyone see it.
To continue the discussion, buy my book *Paris, Pigeons, Portrait of an Unloved Bird* (Maelstöm Reevolution and Porte 7)
