The final stage of courtship, the act that precedes 

 copulation, is called billing. The cock grasps the hen's 

 beak in his, using the same sort of motion he would use 

 to feed a chick. If you want to be anthropomorphic, you 

 could say they were kissing, and through the centuries 

 this has often been said. By the way, billing comes after 

 cooing, which is done as part of the bowing display. 



There is nothing degenerate about these displays. 

 They are essentially the same as the displays of the rock 

 dove, the Eurasian ancestor of all domestic pigeons, and 

 they have a strong family resemblance to the actions of 

 mourning doves and other totally wild members of the 

 Columbidae. 



I am also impressed by the beauty of pigeons. They 

 are among the most accomplished of flyers. They can 

 streak by faster than the legal limit or lightly touch down 

 on a 25th floor window ledge in a 40 mile-an-hour wind. 



Pigeons were probably our first domestic birds. 

 Archaeological surmise says that Neolithic peoples kept 

 them. The evidence takes them back to 4500 B.C. in 

 Iraq. There are references to them in Egypt from before 

 3000 B.C. And of course, the Bible is full of them. A 

 dove brings Noah the news that the Flood is over, that 

 the dry land is emerging. In some versions of the myth, 

 the dove reveals the news by returning to the Ark with 

 red clay stuck to its feet. Noah then asked God to turn 

 the bird's feet permanently red in honor of the moment, 

 and God agreed. Thus the pigeons in Daley Plaza have 

 red feet. 



Abraham sealed his covenant with God by sacrific- 

 ing two pigeons, and pigeons and doves are the only 

 birds mentioned in the Torah as acceptable sacrifices in 

 the temple. A pair of pigeons became the standard sacri- 

 fice for a woman to make when she returned to commu- 

 nity life after giving birth, and in the Gospel of Luke, 

 we read that Mary made such a sacrifice after the birth 

 of Jesus. 



In the New Testament, the dove becomes a symbol 

 of the Holy Spirit, of God Himself, and you can't do 

 much better than that, symbolically speaking. 



I should interject here that the words "pigeon" and 

 "dove" have no scientific standing. Dove comes from 

 Anglo-Saxon; pigeon comes from Norman French, and 

 at one time, the two words had identical meanings in 

 their respective tongues. These days, we tend to apply 

 the word "dove" to the smaller members of the Columbi- 

 dae and the word "pigeon" to the bigger birds. But there 

 is no sharp line of demarcation. Witness the fact that the 

 wild ancestor of the domestic pigeon is the rock dove. 



Pigeons belong to a family of about 300 species that 

 6 live in tropical and temperate regions worldwide. They 



are mostly seed eaters, although some species specialize 

 in fruit. Their beaks are small and rather weak. They 

 cannot crush large seeds the way parrots can, so they are 

 generally confined to eating things they can swallow 

 whole. The smallest pigeons are not much bigger than a 

 sparrow. The largest are the ground-dwelling Victoria 

 crown-pigeons, birds from New Guinea that are almost 

 as big as a turkey hen. 



Despite the size difference, the pigeons show a 

 strong family resemblance. They tend to be small- 

 headed and plump-bodied, and their characteristic 

 head-bobbing walk is instantly recognizable. Take a 

 stroll through the bird house at the Lincoln Park Zoo — 

 there are some Victoria crowned pigeons there — and 

 you will have little trouble recognizing a pigeon, even if 

 you have no idea what species it is. 



A typical pigeon nests, roosts, and takes refuge in 

 trees, while doing its eating on the ground. The rock 

 dove departs from that pattern by nesting in sheltered 

 places on cliff faces. This habit allowed the bird to ex- 

 ploit barren land where trees were scarce or absent, and 

 it also pre-adapted them to nesting under sheltering 

 overhangs on the walls of buildings. In India today, truly 

 wild rock doves still construct their nests on walls. From 

 this, we can surmise the likely source of their domestica- 

 tion. Rock doves probably moved into buildings in the 

 villages and towns of early civilizations. They could nest 

 there and feed in the open fields and pastures that the 

 new science of agricuture created. Such a close associa- 

 tion with humanity could reasonably lead to the impor- 

 tance of pigeons and doves as symbols, and it probably 

 led to the realization that you could breed and raise these 

 creatures in cages and enjoy the fat, tender squabs for 

 dinner. 



We don't know when humans began to use pigeons 

 for purposes other than supper, but we have references in 

 ancient literature that show Julius Caesar sending mes- 

 sages via pigeon during his campaigns in Gaul. And we 

 know from a reference in the Talmud from about A.D. 

 200 that people were racing pigeons. Not only racing 

 them, but betting on the races. The Talmud specifies 

 that pigeon racers are not trustworthy witnesses and 

 should not be allowed to testify in court. Later interpret- 

 ers of this text believe that the prohibition is based on a 

 reluctance to accept the word of gamblers, and pigeon 

 racers are assumed to be gamblers. 



The rock dove lives in treeless places from the Heb- 

 rides to India. Like its domestic descendants, it is a social 

 bird. Its nests are clustered in choice locations, and it 

 feeds in flocks on open ground. Rock doves have been 

 recorded as breeding in all seasons, and our pigeons 



