Andrew D. Blechman - Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the Worlds Most Revered and Reviled Bird

Praise for Pigeons:

Blechman is a talented observer and a light-on-his feet writer. He deftly carves the interesting from the extraneous this is as intimate a profile of pigeons as youll ever read.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Blechman is adroit in his attention to minutiae, and breezy with his prose, and he sets the right tone early: hes both journalistic and amused.

Time Out Chicago

A quick and thoroughly entertaining read, Pigeons will have readers chuckling at the quirky characters and pondering surprising pigeon facts.

Audubon Magazine, Editors Choice

Consistently engaging and surprising Pigeons manages to illuminate not merely the ostensible subject of the book, but also something of the endearing, repellent, heroic, and dastardly nature of that most bizarre of breeds, Homo sapiens.

Salon.com

If ever there was a creature that was due a revisionist assessment, it is the pigeon. Andrew Blechmans wonderful book gives the lowly bird its due, but along the way reveals as much about humanswith our bizarre, sometimes obsessive love-hate relationship to this most enduring of birdsas the pigeons themselves. In so doing, he has written one of those rare and magical books that cause the reader to see the world differently. Read Pigeons and youll never look at Trafalgar Square, the Piazza San Marco, or Bryant Park the same way again.

Warren St. John, author of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer:
A Road Trip Into the Heart of Fan Mania

Enjoyable and informative book while Blechmans book wont convert pigeon haters to pigeon lovers, it does make for entertaining reading.

Publishers Weekly

An enjoyable read.

Library Journal

Few of us who live in cities, besieged by flights of what we like to call winged rats, can rightly be described as philoperisterons. But King George the Fifth of England was. So was Charles Darwin. Julius Reuter was too, though for purely commercial reasons. And so also, and for which we should all be thankful, is Andrew Blechman. Mr. Blechman positively loves pigeonsbut as graceful and ancient grey doves, not as either targets or as food. In this breezy, quirky, endlessly entertaining book, he tells us just whyand explains why philoperisteronicism is, generally speaking, a Good Thing.

Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

No doubt the birds evoke a wide range of emotions among people. And whichever side a person might fall on, Blechmans well-reported findings will leave him better informed about pigeons and the multilayered culture that results.

Associated Press

Ive been as guilty as anybody of looking down on the lowly Rock Dove. But Andrew Blechmans Pigeons woke me up. Informative and well-written, if anybody can read his book and still harbor contempt for pigeons, I have to wonder if there is hope for human beings.

Mark Bittner, author of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Andrew Blechmans writing is graceful and swift like his subject. The ubiquitous pigeon, whose image spans the lows and highs of human imagination, finds a superb chronicler, exegete, partisan, and redeemer in this book. This book proves, once again, that magic is near at hand, that it can feed from our hands, and that there are mottled angels in our midst. Read Pigeonsits marvelous.

Andrei Codrescu, author of New Orleans, Mon Amour
and commentator for NPRs All Things Considered

You can love them or hate them, and even shoot, feed, race, or eat them, but if you ever ignore pigeons as a major natural force, you will surely be splattered upon. After trailing these remarkable creatures from the rooftops of Queens to the castle of a queen, Andrew Blechman has bagged a story that is fun, warm, and full of wonder.

Mark Obmascik, author of The Big Year:
A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession

Pigeons

The Fascinating Saga of the Worlds
Most Revered and Reviled Bird

Andrew D. Blechman

Copyright 2006 by Andrew D. Blechman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blechman, Andrew.
Pigeons / Andrew Blechman.
p. cm.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4600-8
1. Pigeons. I. Title.
QL696.C63B58 2006
598.65dc22
2006043709

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For Lillie Annabelle
I love you to the moon and back again.

If you have men who will exclude any of Gods creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

St. Francis

Whats this fuss I hear about an Eagle Rights Amendment ? Why I think the eagle has been treated fair enough. Between you and me, if we give eagles rights, the next thing you know, well have to give rights to pigeons. Why, you wont be able to get a seat in the park. It will be the birds sitting on the benches throwing us little pieces of toast.

Gilda Radner

Some days youre the pigeon. Some days youre the statue.

Anonymous

FOR MUCH OF MY LIFE, I DIDNT HAVE A STRONG OPINION about pigeons. At best, I found their incessant bobbing and waddling mildly charming to watch as I walked through the streets of New York City. It was my college girlfriend who first alerted me to their nefarious lack of hygiene. They may look harmless, she informed me, but theyre actually insidious carriers of hidden filthrats with wingsthat eat garbage off the streets and crap in their own nests.

Lamenting the citys lack of wildlife, I hung a bird feeder from the fire escape outside my barred windows in an effort to attract songbirds to my apartment. The feeder didnt attract robins or cardinals, but it was popular with pigeons. They flocked to my fire escape, landing in friendly, cooing clusters. They were animated, fun to watch, and they kept me company as I looked out onto an otherwise drab urban vista.

A few days later, I noticed my superintendent standing on the sidewalk contemplating the sudden rise in bird droppings around the buildings entrance. I suspected I was in trouble when he looked up at my window and spied the bird feeder. He bounded up the fire escape, gave me a look of enraged incredulity, and promptly pitched my feeder onto the sidewalk below, where it exploded into a cloud of birdseed shrapnel. My nature experiment was clearly over.

Months after, I got a taste of pigeon prejudice firsthand. I was interviewing for a job outside Rockefeller Center when I felt a splat on my head and then, seconds later, several oozy drips down my ear and onto my freshly pressed white shirt. I was at a complete loss, too embarrassed to survey the damage. Could I just pretend it had never happened?