Pigeons Nesting ((free)) Review

The male begins the rite not with a song, but with a display. He puffs his iridescent throat, fans his tail, and bows before his chosen hen with a series of low, coaxing coos—a soft, throttled sound like water running over stones. If she accepts, he leads her to a potential site. This site is chosen for two things: a modicum of shelter from rain and sun, and a flat surface. A ledge on a cliff face, in the ancestral tradition. More commonly now, a window air conditioner, a broken gutter, the corbel of a cathedral, or the steel I-beam of a highway overpass.

Yet this flimsy construction is a masterwork of function. It allows rainwater to drain away from the eggs instantly. It provides no purchase for predators’ claws. And it is built with astonishing speed. A pair can complete the foundation in a single morning. pigeons nesting

Then come the eggs: two perfect, gleaming white ovals, small and luminous as porcelain. For eighteen days, the parents share the vigil. The hen takes the night shift, her warm breast pressed to the eggs; the male relieves her at mid-morning, cooing her off the nest so she can stretch her wings and feed. They are devoted parents, though their devotion looks strange to us. They do not sing. They do not bring worms. They produce "crop milk"—a curd-like, protein-rich slurry regurgitated from a pouch in their throats—and feed it directly, beak to beak, to the blind, downy squabs. The male begins the rite not with a song, but with a display