The Barn by Ralph Hagen for July 25, 2010

Especially when they poop on your turf!

Just another fellow animal, Rory!

GM, Marg!

They used to be a lot of fun at Trafalgar Square until the geniuses who run it decided to reduce their population.

Rats of the air

Flying dirtballs…

I’d like to hear the pigeon’s side of it.

Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? Really? I think they are hatched full grow and ready to beg. Dirty birds.

They creep me out, too, Rory.

There were so many in the courtyard at my junior high school that some kids got histoplasmosis - 400 kids had to be inoculated as prevention.

Sounds like an episode of Billy the exterminator!

I didn’t realize just how small you actually are Rory.

Lewreader said, about 7 hours ago

Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? Really? I think they are hatched full grow and ready to beg. Dirty birds.

I raise pigeons and they are so ugly when they hatch it’s amazing they grow up to look like they do. I don’t race them what I do is feed them to my snakes as treats.

Darwin used pigeons as a familiar example to illustrate how easily a species could be radically altered by selective breeding. He talked about varieties I never heard of, but I’m pretty sure none of them were as big as a lamb. I don’t think he mentioned snake food either.

What happens when you cross a pigeon and a condor? You probably don’t want it to roost over your motorcycle.

Now let’s get it right here. Apparently Rory has been confronted by a pigeon. They are not the ‘rats of the sky’, that is the term reserved for doves.

ottod: There was one species of pigeon that was bigger than a lamb - the dodo.

This one would if it’s as big as a sheep, even a young sheep :-)

Rock Pigeons are very dirty. They eat where they defecate. Maybe Hitchcock should have used pigeons instead of blackbirds.

I thought I read somewhere that doves are really just white pigeons. True? False?

It’s true, Rmom. However, they’re all beautiful birds and I’m not in favor of destroying them.

Nup, wrong, most doves are grey.

I love the Mourning Doves. I think they are gentle and pretty. Could not imagine hunting them for sport but people do and they are much more sparce around here than they were.

I figure we all have our place in this world. It is when we intrude onto another’s turf and try to change things, remove habitat etc. we have problems develop. I feed wild garden birds but they don’t roost on/in my house. We have a reasonable existence together. City pigeons DO mess up the area where they are.

I love mourning doves, too. Unfortunately, the bigger Chinese ring necked doves are chasing them away.

They all get along at (under) our feeder. I don’t know if the ring-necks are Chinese or not. I didn’t ask for their green card.