Pigeons

[Paul_RK]

Please tell me if you are bored with this story.

Mike

It's captivating to me, and I wish the couple well. We're currently mourning the first feral pigeon to have visited us in years: for a few nights she (just a guess, and coincidentally my wife had taken to calling her Mildred) roosted either on our bedroom wndow ledge or on scaffolding currently attached to the building next door, and then for whatever reason she remained full time in our back yard, not able or caring to fly anywhere and sleeping only a foot or so off the concrete on a step stool. This continued for about a week, and, while she showed no signs of distress, we were starting to ponder trying to find a pigeon-friendly refuge - many animal sanctuaries, and the RSPCA, seem to think euthanasia the only treatment worth giving to a pigeon that's ailing or unsuited to living at large - then one morning she lay there dead.


Just a tiny amount of blood on a shoulder, no scattered feathers... years have passed since we were visited by a cat, so I'm thinking the most likely culprit either a rat at night or a wood pigeon very early in the morning. Three or four wood pigeons do appear regularly and I had been surprised one day to see one of them pecking repeatedly at poor old Mildred, after I've often watched them contentedly sharing a pile of grain even with sparrows. She's missed, and with hindsight I wish I'd set up at least a box to put her in each night (I caught her a couple of times, it wasn't hard and she seemed not at all perturbed) until we could have established why she had just stopped flying.

Paul