Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World

by Courtney Humphries

Why do we see pigeons as lowly urban pests and how did they become such common city dwellers? Courtney Humphries traces the natural history of the pigeon, recounting how these shy birds that once made their homes on the sparse cliffs of sea coasts came to dominate our urban public spaces. While detailing this evolution, Humphries introduces us to The concept that animals can become dependent on humans without ceasing to be wild; they can adapt to the cityscape as if it were a field or a forest. Superdove simultaneously explores the pigeon's cultural transformation, from its life in the dovecotes of ancient Egypt to its service in the trenches of World War I, to its feats within the pigeon-racing societies of today. While the dove is traditionally recognized as a symbol of peace, the pigeon has long inspired a different sort of fetishistic devotion from breeders, eaters, and artists—and from those who recognized and exploited the pigeon's astounding abilities. Because of their fecundity, pigeons were symbols of fertility associated with Aphrodite, while their keen ability to find their way home made them ideal messengers and even pilots. Their usefulness largely forgotten, today's pigeons have become as ubiquitous and reviled as rats. But Superdove reveals something more By using pigeons for our own purposes, we humans have changed their evolution. And in doing so, we have helped make pigeons the ideal city dwellers they are today. In the tradition of Rats , the book that made its namesake rodents famous, Superdove is the fascinating story of the pigeon's journey from the wild to the city—the home they'll never leave.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Animals, History, Birds, Natural History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published August 12, 2008

About the author

Courtney Humphries is a freelance journalist and author who writes about ideas and developments in science, health, and culture for publications such as the Boston Globe, Technology Review, New Scientist, Nature, Science, Wired, and Harvard Magazine. She's the author of Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan….And the World, a natural history of pigeons published by Smithsonian Books.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's just not been a lot of research on pigeons, and so there's not a lot of material for Humphries to work with... which means this book covers a lot of ground fairly superficially and is still short.

Which further means that it's a pretty fun read for the casual armchair naturalist. More engaging, imo, than the others of the type that I've read recently: Weeds and Subirdia.

Also do know that she's a science writer... a journalist. Not a scientist. Generally that perspective makes for a flawed work, but this seemed to me just fine.

And I agree with her, and with the authors of Feral Pigeons, that pigeons would make a great study subject *because* they are neither truly wild nor truly domesticated.

3.5 stars rounded up because it was just a pleasure to read.

So what's your favorite book about synanthropes?
----------
Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus wrote poetry about evolution. I wonder why this is the first I've heard of it. Must try to find examples. Erasmus Darwin

[roswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have very high standards for pigeon books, sorry. Very nice bibliography, though.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have just finished the unique story about pigeons. This lighthearted study of this bird gives the reader a new way to look at the pigeon and how it has impacted our lives.
Ms Humphries gives us her own personal look as she expresses her study of these birds, while keeping it light, she fills us with knowledge and the unexpected look at the value of these birds. If you are looking for something strangely interesting, this could be the book to pick up and read.

[Sugarpuss O'Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a fun little escape. (Some people read romance novels. I read books about quirky topics. It suits my offbeat personality, what can I tell you.)

How many people do you know who would read a book about a bird most people chose to ignore? I guess that's what drew me to this book in the first place. Pigeons are EVERYWHERE. And now, after reading Superdove, I know why. They may be common, but pigeons are truly remarkable creatures. I'll never look at another pigeon the same way again.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure that the title and cover image were put together by the publisher without much input from the author, because I thought the book was much more subtle and thought-provoking than you might guess from the "superdove" picture (but an easy and pleasurable read nonetheless). Humphries does a wonderful job of exploring our conceptions about invasive species, what being "wild" and "natural" really means, the wonder that is evolution, and a lot else, all though the lens of a creature that, when you take a closer look, disrupts a lot of our usual categories.

The story of the pigeon captures a lot about the big story of "man and nature" and Humphries does a great job of presenting the intimate and changing history of our relationship with this bird, including the divergent attitudes of scientists today. Really, she doesn't just present one story, but manages to present many different stories of the pigeon, past and present, and they are often very surprising. I came away from this book knowing more about Darwin, urban ecology, ornithology, the dynamics of activism, oddball hobbyists, the practice of science, B.F. Skinner, and the Swiss nanny state! I think this is science writing at its best--informative and perspective changing. In a time when we are increasingly grappling with our role on the planet, the story of the pigeon turns out to have a lot of relevance!

[Janet Eshenroder · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars Credit to the author for a thorough study of doves, taken from a multiple of directions:history, breeding, interactions with people, scientific studies, dove fanatics, and her own experiences, immersed in communities of dove enthusiasts. There were a few sections I found fascinating. For most of the book, I appreciated the thoroughness of covering everything one might want to know about doves, but I found it way too easy to put the book down and read other books. I did end up with a better understanding of doves. Unlike other books on goshawks or turkey vultures, I never got excited over the world of this particular species. Still, I’d give the author credit for a solid reference book.

[DW · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book, I felt that the author chose the name to "trick" people into picking up the book because she thought nobody would want to read a book about pigeons. But I would read a book about pigeons - I never understood the prejudice against them. "Rats with wings" seems like a very mean-spirited description.

I had no idea that pigeons are descended from rock doves in the Middle East, and that doves and pigeons are the same. The doves liked to nest in cliffs and eat grain. People built houses for them (dovecotes) and let them fly around and mostly feed themselves, because the people wanted to eat pigeons (squab is a young pigeon). And then the pigeons escaped and ended up absolutely everywhere, including the Galapagos (but they were exterminated from there in the early 2000s in a push to only have native species there). Pigeons like to live around humans because we make buildings that make good nesting sites (building facades from the early 20th century, air conditioners), and we leave a lot of grain-based food lying around.

I also had no idea that there are pigeon fanciers who breed weird types of pigeons, including ones that can't take care of themselves like the Almond Tumbler, and show them for prizes. Or definitely that Charles Darwin was one and that he kept and studied pigeons and wrote about them in Origin of Species. The stuff about homing pigeons was fascinating - that no matter what you do, the birds come home. They really seem to have multiple ways of navigating, sight, smell, magnetic fields, etc, and they can usually compensate for any subset of those being missing. Funny about them being so celebrated for delivering messages (still useful even if one-way) and really frustrating and disheartening that they were never used for other tasks just because of human prejudice. For instance, they could be trained to do quality control or missile guidance (the famous B. J. Skinner arranged a demo for the military and was politely laughed out of the room). Why are humans so stupid? Maybe pigeons could do better at classifying images than current algorithms. We'll probably never know.

It's also fascinating to learn that pigeons are technically "feral" (I never knew that meant "formerly domesticated") and for that reason they are unsuitable for scientific study because they punch above their brain size in intelligence tests. Also fascinating that most people who regularly rescue or feed pigeons ("pigeon mothers") tend to be socially isolated and mentally disturbed. After all, pigeons are the least endangered bird anywhere. "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins kept running through my head. And that the reason for the overpopulation of pigeons in cities is really just due to pigeon mothers (regular feeding can change the whole ecosystem for the birds) and that Basel Switzerland reduced their pigeon population with a public campaign that made it unacceptable to feed pigeons, and therefore the pigeon mothers were scared to feed them because of the strong social pressure to conform, which probably exists only in Switzerland. I suddenly want to move to Switzerland, it sounds so enlightened there.

I read the entire bibliography section because I had never seen footnotes in narrative form. Every other book references a bit of text and then has a sentence or a paragraph about it. The entire section of this book read like somebody speaking - it really reminded me of how they do the credits on radio, everything is full sentences. It made me wonder why - it seems unlikely that she didn't keep detailed enough notes to specifically reference bits of text. Maybe she felt it would be too tedious to put "ibid" over and over again.

The book really could have used more, and color, pictures.

"In a large-scale commercial enterprise, waiting for all that parenting is highly inefficient, and costs are always high. Chickens, however, are perfectly suited to mass production, in which quantities are large and prices are low. A hen can lay more than two hundred eggs a year, while a pair of pigeons can raise about a dozen squabs. So pigeons were never productive enough to be the center of agriculture, but they were popular enough to be taken wherever people went." p 19

"Later, messages were copied together, reduced in size by [...] microphotography [...], then rolled into a goose quill and attached to the pigeons feathers. Each pigeon could carry more than two thousand messages this way." p 69

"During the first and second world wars, pigeons were official members of militaries and honored as such." p 69

"At its peak [during World War II], the U.S. Pigeon Corps had three thousand enlisted men, one hundred and fifty officers, and fifty-four thousand pigeons." p69-70

"'By this time we had begun to realize that a pigeon was more easily controlled than a physical scientist on a committee. [...] One can talk about phase lag in pursuit behavior and discuss mathematical predictions of hunting without reflecting too closely upon what is inside the black box. But the spectacle of a living pigeon carrying out its assignment, no matter how beautifully, simply reminded the committee of how utterly fantastic our proposal was.'" Skinner, p86

"A pecking pigeon in particular lacks gravitas." p 86

"What's interesting is that its approach ultimately depended on controlling people rather than pigeons." p154 (Basel's approach to limit the pigeon population)

"'In a broader social context,' Dunn said, 'anything that's abundant is thought of as not very good.'" - p182

[M]

I picked up “Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World” by Courtney Humphries as an aid, to have a bit of an introduction to my research on pigeon-human relationships. I knew, from the boastful title, that I couldn’t expect a critical animal studies perspective, but regardless, the book proved useful. It’s well written and well researched for the general audience, I’d say. The position of the author shifts throughout the book a bit, while learning about pigeons herself. Humphries looks into multiple areas of the human-pigeon relationship, from historical accounts of agricultural use, to current-day cohabitation in cities where they are deemed as pests. The saga of this relationship can hardly get more interesting than it already has been.

To begin with, in Egypt, where domesticated pigeon presence is first noted, dovecotes were made of mud and pigeon dung was used as fertilizer. Then with the Romans, pigeon-keeping spread to Europe, slowly becoming a common future in Italy, France and England after the Renaissance (when houses were often built with an open tower at the top, a style that became iconic of the Italian villa). When the use of pigeons for food started declining, dovecotes remained popular as a sign of the elite. This fashion spread to the “New world” (colonized America), where pigeon-keeping was, at first, an upper class symbol. As the common pigeon spread into cities, forests were being cleared out, making the passenger pigeon extinct.

Pigeons delve deep into human culture, bearing countless symbols. For example, in France, the pigeons of the upper classes were allowed to forage freely on the grain of the farmers, and thus during the French Revolution, the peasants destroyed the pigeon houses as a sign of opposition. In the present day, domesticated pigeons are still kept, even if more rarely, and more often by the working class.

The author is thorough in finding interesting facts about pigeons, but not so much in criticizing how humans have instrumentalized them. She even reasons that it makes sense to study the pigeon “gastronomically”, which means… to eat them. It turns out the pigeon is “delicious”. This one act is sufficient to illustrate her own position towards the bird: a deep interest perhaps, true curiosity, but lacking in critical analysis of human domination towards them. While onwards in the book, the author explores various ways of seeing and relating to pigeons, undoing the nature/culture dichotomy that they themselves break out of, she never really ends up questioning her own anthroprivilege.

Even at the end, the author is quite clearly in line with scientific experts who promote population control, and describes “Pigeon People'' with a bit of distance and humor even, almost poking fun at “pigeon activists” because, it is said, the pigeon is a “successful” species. The stressing of this evolutionary “success”, over and over, points out one of the main faults of such a view: it negates the individual. Within it, there is no “one” pigeon. All pigeons are simply members of their species. It doesn’t matter if many die in terrible conditions in our cities, because many more will be born.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who knew pigeons could be so interesting? I’ll never look at them the same. Along with sparrows and starlings, our common street pigeon did not exist in America before the Europeans. We had billions of wild passenger pigeons, but managed to drive those to extinction, of course. All our street pigeons now are feral; i.e., they were once domesticated but escaped into the wild. The Europeans brought them over as an agricultural product; a food source. They reproduce too easily to stay confined to their dovecotes, and many were released anyway as meat tastes changed. I had heard about people eating squab in posh restaurants, but did not realize a squab is just a baby pigeon! I thought it was an entirely different bird. You can get it online, for heaven’s sake, but it’s pricey: a one-pound, single-serving squab can go for up to $25. The squab they sell for meat these days is from domesticated pigeons, however.

Doves are really just pigeons, and I thought it was hilarious that the author pointed out we never complain about “dove droppings” on statues, or consider the dove of peace and Christianity to be the Peace Pigeon. LOL!

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there are gaps in Humphries' research, the topic itself is a rich one and this book opens up further social-history research into the subject of the urban pigeon, a most resilient and fascinating species. And while I would have liked the author to explore the relevant social angles more robustly rather than so personally, I could not help but see why her stories always also veered towards the personal observations since she seems to have become very emotionally involved--more than she expected to. It's an interesting book that weaves together different strands of a great story on an under-studied but fascinating bird population.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, quick, entertaining read full of information about pigeons. Perhaps not as funny as it could have been (I'd love to see this subject matter in Mary Roach's hands), but solid. I'd recommend to anyone who has ever thought, "What's their deal?" when seeing a bunch of pigeons walking down the street or perched on a wire.

[D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a few amazing features of this well written story of how pigeons have "fitted" into the world humans have made. The research is so careful, and spans several branches of science. I encourage reading this- even if you haven't time to do it in two stints, it is just as enjoyable if spread out over a year, or even longer. But I'll bet you get hooked, and finish it much more quickly!

[Kathryn Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing but respect for my American War hero Cher Ami

Really sweet book, did a good job covering many aspects of pigeon life, death, occupation, perception and otherwise quickly and effectively in a nice short read. A sucker for deep dives I wish there had been more in each chapter, but an excellent annotated bibliography gave me lots of direction for my next pigeon venture.

[Simone Fouche · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a really fun read. Entertaining.

I had never before thought of the consequences of partially domesticating animals but not to the point where they become fully dependent on humans. I suspect I will never look at pigeons the same way again.

[Ellison Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd consider this a 5+ star graduate project (which the author says is its origin) and a 4-star book. It's great over all. Honestly, it blew mind. Great information, well-presented. Some of it was redundant or slow, and I skimmed. But it picked back up. A worthwhile read.

[Kathy Bolster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading about the humble pigeon. Will not look at them in the same way any more.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light, enjoyable read for anyone interested in learning the basics about pigeons

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Pigeons, and anything on them I will read.

[Elysia Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very enjoyable book, I will never look at pigeons the same way again.

[Ginny Monk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really interesting and a quick read on the intertwined lives of humans and pigeons. I went in quite neutral on pigeons and have emerged with lots of fun facts and a deep appreciation for the bird.

[Thomas Hynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fine, but I have no idea why the word "Manhattan" is on the cover. I guess I have a few more pages left, but so far the book has almost NOTHING to do with NYC.

[mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up and set it down dozens of times over the months it took me to get through it. I ran through "Rats" much faster. Why?

In short, "Rats" had a more compelling narrator, if only in his neurotic stalking of the four-legged vermin. "Superdove" isn't exactly a scholarly work -- its author, Courtney Humphries, is clearly aiming for a mass audience -- but what she crafts is ultimately less a narrative about, and more a study of, the bird city-dwellers love to hate. The "Rats" author knew people would think he was a deviant from the get-go and he used this to his storytelling advantage. Humphries doesn't go for this device, instead choosing to present information for information's sake. She assumes the reader will have an initial interest in the subject matter and presents things in a very straightforward manner, never going for the "I know you think I'm crazy" angle.

Her approach of preaching to the converted has its perils, considering that pigeons have a fairly limited, if vocal, fan base. The book might have benefited from having some of the more accessible later chapters placed closer to the front of the book. In these late chapters, she describes the bread-scattering "pigeon mothers" and discusses her own growing fondness for the maligned bird. I'm sure that her own interest came only after the extensive study that she describes in the earlier chapters, but part of a good narrative line is knowing when to depart from the chronological.

The paradoxical thing is that I don't feel I know a lot more about everyday pigeon life after having read this book. Just before I completed it, I saw a dead pigeon on the sidewalk and, rather than taking a picture myself for the blog entry I intended to write, I went to flickr instead and searched for "dead pigeon." I learned as much from the comments on some of those photos as I did from this book.

From the book, I do know a lot more about "fancy" pigeon breeds, homing pigeons, pigeons' roles in various wars... but I don't feel like I know that much more about the everyday pigeon pecking at the sidewalk outside my building. I think Humphries spent so much time telling me why the species is important that she forgot to tell me why to value the ones I see every day. I know from her book that she would want me to come away with this impression. But I'm not feeling it.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this little book. The author interviews pigeon breeders, pigeon racers, behavioral scientists and pigeon enthusiasts to find out more about this once-domesticated but now feral creature that exists in our midst, yet is so easy to ignore. I liked how she juxtaposed the average urban dweller's apathy (or downright disgust) towards these birds with the clever existences they've carved out for themselves.

The most fascinating part I found was her description of how pigeons' focus and visual accuracy was harnessed to do quality control in the manufacture of pharmaceutical capsules. But when people found out pigeons were performing this task, they couldn't wrap their brains around (supposedly) stupid, filthy birds doing this kind of work. This, despite their better accuracy than human inspectors.

On a personal note, I was really looking forward to reading this on my lunch hour. I imagined myself glancing at the pigeons that hang out around my building from time to time to compare and verify all the interesting things I was reading about pigeon morphology and behavior. Sadly, the usual flock of birds was very aloof and spent those days sitting on a far away rooftop. Perhaps they were a little self-conscious under all the scrutiny? Or maybe they were weirded-out by the goofy book jacket (see below).

Although I liked this book, I felt very sorry for the author. I think the publisher really did her a disservice with the title and the jacket design. The concept of the "superdove" was mentioned on only a few pages, only one chapter involved Manhattan in any way -- and that chapter was more about bickering pigeon-lovers than pigeons themselves, and the picture on the front is both ridiculous and creepy. I'm sure that some suit somewhere thought that sales could be boosted with these ploys, but they're puzzling more than anything else.

Also, this book reminded me of one of my favorite Sesame Street segments that I enjoyed when I was a kid. It's Bert, Doin' the Pigeon.

[A Diveglia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the atrocious and distressing cover (publisher: what were you thinking?!), this book is a pretty thorough natural history of the pigeon and its rise as the ubiquitous urban bird. The author eats squab, peeks into pigeon-centric aviaries, seeks out wild rock doves, attends a pigeon lovers' meeting, and generally gives us glimpses into different aspects of pigeonry (pigeonry?). I'd love a little more information about the ways that pigeons and other animals can co-develop alongside humans without becoming "domesticated", but maybe that's another book.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Superdove (Subtitle: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan...and the World) by Courtney Humphries

Courtney Humphries has for her focus in this book the humble rock dove. Excuse me, it's no longer known officially as a rock dove, they changed the name to rock pigeon, because the opinion of this bird (known to most of us as pigeons, aka rats with wings) had dropped so much that the people whose job it is to determine such things could not stomach the idea of it being called a dove.

There's plenty of pigeons in the book, but really much of what is fascinating about the story in Superdove is how our species' opinion of theirs changes from one century to the next, and what that says about us. Pigeons have risen in sync with the rise of grain agriculture, and the cities that created, and in our dislike of pigeons there is much of modern humanity's self-loathing. Of course, there are also a minority who not only like, but actively feed, pigeons in a way that, say, rats without wings rarely are. Humphries talks to those who raise pigeons for food, those who raise them for racing, and those who raise them to demonstrate how weird they can look (Charles Darwin was once one of these). She watches them in her own city, and most of all she realizes how little most of us (including herself) notice them. In every aspect of this, she is good at providing us the facts first and primarily, and often from personal experience as well as in the words of experts (including pigeon fanciers or racers, some of whom thought Humphries was an animal-rights spy). You see pigeons every day; here's a book that tells you what you're looking at (hint: it's not a rodent).

[Adi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this so soon after Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird; they cover a lot of the same territory, but Blechman went heavier on the natural history and colorful modern pigeon world characters... which was nice, except that the prose was plodding. It was good to already know that kind of thing, as it was what I was after, reading this; Superdove has more cultural history, which isn't so much what I wanted, but it's a much better book. Better organized, better written--it's compared somewhere on the jacket to Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, and I'd agree. Neither of them are quite as lovely as they could be--they're so close, it makes the errors and slips, the lapses into lazier prose, more glaring--but they're definitely a cut above.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure how I found this book, but I have no complaints whatsoever. Because this book is just plain entertaining.

I really enjoyed the combination of popular science and journalism. This isn't a book written from other books - the bibliography is solid, but the author also did a (frankly amazing) amount of personal research, from talking with scientists to attending pigeon fancy shows. The style reminds me of long-form journalism, with the added benefit of chapter breaks (and no pressure to read the whole thing in one go).

As for the content... I didn't even know there is so much to learn about pigeons. And it really made me think about the way we separate nature and man-made environments and the animals living within them.

Also, Darwin turning into a pigeon fanboy will never stop being adorable.

If you like nature documentaries, learning new things, well-written journalism, ecology, and/or pigeons, you will like this book.

[Elaine Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was book was rad! It's been about a month since I read it, so some of the details are fuzzy, but it was totally enjoyable. Read it on the plane/in the airport, and my biggest complaint is that it's so quick & short that I ended up having to buy a book for my return trip. (I read both this and the Ida Tarbell book on the trip out.)

Covers the pigeon as a historical, scientific, and cultural phenomenon, including both pigeon fanciers (like Darwin!) and pigeon mothers (people who feed urban birds), plus Skinner's attempt at guided missiles. Makes the case for the urban pigeon as a special case in the animal kingdom: neither wild nor domesticated, but evolved to co-exist in proximity to human settlement. (Will the same prove true of raccoons in North America?) Lots of interesting characters met along the way.

[Mollie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was quirky, funny, and covered many different facets of what it means to be a pigeon and what that relationship means to human beings.
I learned about how Pigeon messaging actually works and the sort of... strange sense of nobility the bird once held in role. As well as their role with humans when they were considered a source of food and were domesticated as such in juxtaposition to how pigeons are viewed today on the street. I didn't realize pigeons have such a rich history.

Mostly I loved the sense of humor with which the topic was treated and I very much enjoyed that the book was written in and about locations in my home city of Boston.


Um..yay.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favorite kind of popular scientific/nature writing! I learned so much about these unfairly maligned birds, and Humphries writes with a pleasing mixture of intelligence and accessibility. Really, pigeons stand out as a true superhero of nature, one of the few creatures of this earth who is neither wild or domesticated, but a strange and wonderful amalgamation of both. Truly, I think the reason why we dislike ubiquitous, hardy city species such as doves (and their mammal counterparts, rats) is because they are too much like us: infinitely adaptable, hardy, and attached to delicious cereal-based foods.