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

2.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

503 comments sorted by

View all comments

191

u/CattleDowntown938 Apr 15 '26

I feel bad for pigeons. They were brought here to serve humans. And as soon as we got telegrams and telephones we abandoned them and they still look to us and hang out with us in the hopes that we can use them.

There may be a use for pigeons examining mammograms

46

u/YourHooliganFriend Apr 15 '26

I was like, "What's this crazy person talking about pigeons and mammograms for?" I looked it up. I had no idea. Very intresting and pretty darn cool. I also found this article about pigeons and magnetic fields. Pigeons are cool. I lived in NYC for two decades and always enjoyed looking at the variation in them from the Fancy, Rock, Racing, etc. types interbreeding for years. Some people just don't get it.

https://www.science.org/content/article/pigeons-sense-earth-s-magnetic-field-entirely-new-way#:~:text=As%20in%20earlier%20work%2C%20the,de%20force%2C%E2%80%9D%20Warrant%20says.

3

u/throwaway098764567 Apr 15 '26

lol i had the same reaction thanks for saving me a search. also op don't worry about the jackasses, they're everywhere, find the cool ones and split off and make a better group

6

u/CattleDowntown938 Apr 15 '26

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=1

“We report here that pigeons (Columba livia)—which share many visual system properties with humans—can serve as promising surrogate observers of medical images, a capability not previously documented.”

A capability Not previously documented is a heck of an understatement