Bird of the Month: Rock

The Rock Dove

by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd

Suddenly round the cliff face bolt

Pigeon and falcon – they tear the air

And are gone in it, the air stands, without motion,

As though nothing had drawn that savage blue stroke there. Norman MacCaig, from A Good Day

A cliff top is the most likely place to hear or see the most thrilling of all bird spectacles: the stoop of a peregrine or eagle in pursuit of the cave-dwelling rock dove (Columba livia).

Mark Cocker (Birds Britannica) calls the rock dove ‘the pigeon’, the ultimate progenitor – from the global city pigeon of feral indistinction to the 228 named varieties estimated by Charles Darwin, most renowned of pigeon-fanciers.

From these rock-derived varieties, famous pigeons have emerged, especially the carrier-pigeon winners of the Dickin Medal, the VC for animals. The medal was instituted in 1943 by Maria Dickin, founder of the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals.

Georges V and VI lent their carriers for the Army Pigeon Service in both world wars. There is an animal cemetery at Ilford, with a special section for bird burials. A fifth of Dickin medallists are buried there.

In 2007, when the cemetery reopened after lottery-funded restoration, a bugler played the Last Post, accompanied by a pigeon fly-past. Unfortunately, at the first toot, the fly-past turned tail.

The most expensive racing pigeon is New Kim, which fetched $1.8 million in a 2020 online auction. It was raised in Belgium – heartland of pigeon-racing, with 20,000 current owners – and sold to a Chinese bidder. Chinese plutocrats are the latest pigeon enthusiasts. The price was especially remarkable since New Kim was a female – males are considered the more productive investment.

In 1876, King Leopold VI presented the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, with racing pigeons. Edward built the pigeon loft at Sandringham and the tradition has been upheld. The Queen’s birds have won all the principal UK races. She is patron of several pigeon-racing societies, notably the Royal Pigeon Racing Association and National Flying Club. She has donated royal birds to charitable auctions, including for research into pigeon-fancier’s lung disease.

Prince Philip was an enthusiast, and at 12 noon on 17th April, to mark his funeral, racing pigeons were released from the royal lofts at Sandringham and Windsor, and by the RPRA in 65 UK cities – ten birds per city, in honour of his ten decades.

Feral birds have gone native and returned to the caves. So the pure rock stock – white rump; double-barred wing – is confined to the remotest coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Norman MacCaig (1910-1996) also witnessed the stoop of a golden eagle on one of these:

But suddenly I was introduced to suddenness,

As though a train entered a room, a headlong pigeon

Cometed past me, and space opened in strips

Between pinions and tail feathers of the eagle after it –

It had seen me. What vans of brakes!

What voluptuousness! From In Everything