Rock Pigeon

For Throwback Thursday, here's a bird that's probably associated with our cities more than woods, meadows or wetlands. It's a Rock Pigeon (AKA Rock Dove); I've mentioned before that there's no clear taxonomic difference between doves and pigeons. 

Technically calling them Rock Doves is slightly old-fashioned; that used to be the common name for the birds (in English) before the American Ornithologists' Union and the British Ornithologists' Union decided to switch to Rock Pigeon for complicated reasons. (The scientific name didn't change so there wasn't a need to get worldwide support for the name change. I don't know if English speakers in Canada, Australia, India, etc. had any input though.)

I suppose to be more precise, I could have referred to the bird as a Feral Pigeon, which is a wild version of the Domestic Pigeon, which is in turn a tame version of the Rock Pigeon. (The Feral Pigeon and the Domestic Pigeon together comprise a subspecies of the Rock Pigeon.)

The Domestic Pigeon is considered to be the 1st domesticated bird, tamed 5000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, then spreading to ancient Egypt.

Since they're mostly vegetarians, I suspect that like their Mourning Dove cousins, they don't suffer from brood parasites like the Brown-headed Cowbird.

March 3, 2018 at Duke Farms
Photo 14270271, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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