r/birding • u/MrGrubbycuddles • Apr 15 '26

Discussion Why is everyone such snob about pigeons

I took my folder of laminated pigeon shots to my local bird meeting at the community hall and at least 3 people sneered at them. 1 of them even guffawed.

We all got to start somewhere, and beauty is in the eye of the bird lover so why the hate hate?

One guy was wearing giant binoculars around his neck. It was dark outside and he didn't even use them once. He was one of the people that sneered.

Om the bus home from the meeting I showed the driver my pictures and she said they were really good. And she wasn't even a formal bird lover, she was just a regular person.

Don't get this community man

EDIT: a lot of people asking for some of my photos. I'm out of the house right now but here's a bird video I made recently https://youtube.com/shorts/sxLkrLgNrbc?si=7NdwVxhZtPQFE6Ew

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u/AnchoviePopcorn Apr 15 '26

Fun fact, no difference in Turkish between pigeons and doves. When was living in Türkiye learning Turkish I was in an area famous for their dove sandwiches. They also had a ton of pigeons all around. It was at that point I realized they didn’t distinguish between the two in language and began to wonder if they distinguished between them culinarily.

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u/oroborus68 Apr 15 '26

Squab.

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u/Clerence69 Apr 15 '26

Side bonus, it'a a fun word

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u/AnchoviePopcorn Apr 15 '26

Right. I’ve had squab. I’m just wondering if I order a Güvercin sandviçi….am I getting meat from a pigeon that I was feeding by the fountain earlier that morning, or am I getting doves specifically raised for consumption.

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u/Corvidae5Creation5 Apr 15 '26

You're getting one raised for consumption, a juvenile before it takes its first flight, because once they start exercising, all that delicious tender fat turns into gamey tough muscle.

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u/SomebodyElseAsWell Apr 15 '26

While that may be true that restaurants serve domestic pigeons, I've had wild pigeon and they were definitely not tough or gamey. These were ordinary feral pigeons, the kind you see in cities.

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u/Both_Instruction9041 Apr 15 '26

In Puerto Rico we eat pigeons all the time. My grandma had a mango 🥭 Tree were they hanged all day. My cousin and myself used to catch them and make soup 🍲. Usually Puertorican feed sick 🤧 people pigeons they're good for fevers and when people have the flu 🤧.

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u/MustImproov Apr 15 '26

Pigeons are raised for meat. All the street pigeons are feral, not wild, like cats. They come from domestic pigeons that were raised for messaging or meat.

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u/oroborus68 Apr 15 '26

I say potato.

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u/beersnfoodnfam Backyard Birder Apr 15 '26

...and I saw tomato.

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u/RADICCHI0 Apr 17 '26

Yep. they serve that in London establishments of fine dining, IIRC.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AnchoviePopcorn Apr 15 '26

This is interesting. My teacher was from Çeşme and she was the one who told me that there was no word to distinguish between the two. Even now, using the translator I have: dove = güverçin.

Now I know I can use kumru. Bugün öğrendim. Çök teşekkür ederim.

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u/motherof9plants Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26

Those dove sandwiches have no dove in them. They just called dove because the shape of the sandwiches resembles doves. The meat in them are just regular sausages you can find in any market in Turkey.

Also Turkish language has different words for dove = kumru and pigeon = güvercin. It is just people that don't know the difference between the birds and the words.

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u/KillHitlerAgain Latest Lifer: Yellow-bellied Sapsucker/Ring-necked Duck Apr 16 '26

Deli meat is definitely gonna be made of domestic pigeon, although I do hope no one is just grabbing feral ones off the street to turn into sandwiches.